fossil fuels at Princeton
Fossil fuel companies aren’t just in Princeton’s investment portfolio. They also play a substantial role in funding climate research on campus. Since 2000, ExxonMobil and BP together have given over $35 million to the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment and the Climate Mitigation Initiative (CMI) at Princeton University. Over the last 5 years alone, the University has received $26.2 million in funding research from eleven oil and gas companies, with most of that coming from ExxonMobil and BP.
This funding calls into question the integrity of any research produced by these entities.
As Divest Princeton wrote in the Daily Princetonian, “Although Princeton’s Carbon Mitigation Initiative conducts real, insightful, and critical research, the fact that it is solely funded by BP raises suspicions when the Institute’s work allows the company to direct the climate conversation towards energy changes that benefit it. This is sponsorship bias, a well-documented phenomenon where industry funders influence research questions and the framing of issues to the general public. … CMI’s funding structure allows BP to set the agenda on climate research, directing dollars towards activities that help protect their business and away from research that doesn’t. Further, through CMI, BP leverages its relationship with Princeton to greenwash its image into that of a ‘climate leader,’ despite plans to continue fossil fuel extraction past critical tipping points.”
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2023 My journey out of fossil fuel-funded research Nature
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9/5/2024 University funding from fossil fuels slowing switch to green energy – report The Guardian
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Read the 2024 study Fossil fuel industry influence in higher education: A review and a research agenda Climate Change
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Read the 2024 report In the Service of Delay: Fossil Fuel Connections to Princeton University
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9/19/2024 Elite US universities rake in millions from big oil donations, research finds The Guardian
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Exxon's years' long presence on Princeton's campus was recently detailed in The Guardian:
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Read more about fossil fuel funding of climate research on university campuses and efforts to make research fossil free.
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June 2023 Nature Geoscience My journey out of fossil fuel-funded research
Petrotiger:
Princeton's own fossil fuel company
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Naomi Cohen-Shields '20 and Tom Taylor *21 (5/20/2021) Princeton's fossil fuel holdings are not just an abstract concept Daily Princetonian
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Sunrise Princeton, September 2024: In the Service of Delay: Fossil Fuel Connections to Princeton University
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2/20/2025 Princeton’s Slow Burn: Inside the PetroTigers and the University’s four decades of private fossil fuel investments​ Princeton Alumni Weekly :
Last September, the student activist group Sunrise Princeton released a report that included details about “a fossil fuel company called PetroTiger,” which it described as “an oil and gas enterprise that all evidence suggests Princeton owns.” Vice President of Finance Jim Matteo was asked about PetroTiger by a member of Sunrise Princeton at the September meeting of the Council of the Princeton University Community (CPUC). He said, it is “an energy property that [Princeton has] invested with going back to the 1980s” and the University doesn’t plan to eliminate private investments in fossil fuels.
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