Princeton professor and climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer didn’t always see partnering with fossil fuel companies to do climate research as a giant red flag. But he eventually came to view those relationships as a conflict of interest and cut ties with industry.
Between 2010 and 2020, the fossil fuel industry funded $700 million worth of energy research on U.S. campuses. At Princeton last year, the funding of research by oil and gas companies increased by 15 percent to more than $4 million.
“At some point, I just decided I didn’t want to take money from any fossil fuel company,” says Oppenheimer. As the director of Princeton University’s Center for Policy Research on Energy and Environment, Oppenheimer elaborated on this in an interview with Divest Princeton, a group to which the authors belong: “As things went on, the urgency of the climate problem . . . became more and more evident. The whole idea that we had to go to zero with fossil fuels as soon as possible started to mature as something that not only was an aspiration, but needed to be talked about in a very policy-relevant sense.”
Oppenheimer asked himself: “If the world’s got to get rid of fossil fuels, is taking money from a fossil fuel company advancing that agenda?”
Students, alumni, and faculty at Princeton, including Oppenheimer, have long advocated for fossil fuel divestment at the university. For more than a decade, organizers have called on Princeton to cut all financial ties to the industry on account of Big Oil’s culpability in the climate crisis and decades of deliberate climate disinformation. In September 2022, the university announced plans to partially divest and stop receiving research funding from certain fossil fuel companies, a process known as dissociating. In a historic move, Princeton divested $1 billion from publicly traded fossil fuel companies.
But the university also held on to $700 million worth of investments in privately-held fossil fuel companies, known as some of the worst actors given their lack of financial regulation. Princeton also quietly dropped the idea of setting a target date for a net-zero endowment. On the research side, the university ended financial research partnerships with ninety coal and tar sands companies, including Exxon.
This year, the university updated its research dissociation list, refusing funding from ConocoPhillips and a number of foreign coal and tar sands companies—but reinstating TotalEnergies as an acceptable partner. The French oil and gas company is responsible for the widely contested East African Crude Oil Pipeline. Princeton continues to accept funding for climate research from fossil fuel companies including BP and Shell. And, in 2023, it increased funding from oil and gas companies by 15 percent to more than $4.4 million. Oppenheimer notes that Princeton’s “job is not finished,” and that the university could be much more aggressive in dismantling fossil fuel ties.
Oppenheimer has shown that it is possible to reject fossil fuel funding and continue to produce meaningful climate research. In his decades-long career as a climate scientist, he has done everything from advising Congress on rising sea levels, to informing British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher about climate change, to authoring the reports of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He has never regretted choosing to be independent from fossil fuels.
“I always had enough money for research from other sources,” he says. “It wasn’t like I was going to starve to death or not be able to professionally do what I wanted to do.”
Oppenheimer recognizes the privilege of working at an elite institution like Princeton, which has an endowment of more than $34 billion. “With or without Exxon,” he says, “there are going to be plenty of resources.” While foregoing over $4 million of fossil fuel funding annually would seem financially foolish, it represents only 1.5 percent of sponsored research at Princeton.
“If I’m going to take fossil fuel money, am I going to help solve the crisis, or am I merely going to float along on corporate returns that arise from destroying the world as we know it?”
Currently, there are numerous lawsuits in New Jersey, where Princeton is located, against fossil fuel companies for consumer fraud, deception, and disinformation.
When asked about advice he would share with young climate scientists deciding on their research funding, Oppenheimer says, “I would tell them to think about how [fossil fuel companies] are using the research that they’re funding. Are they going to use your research to do a little greenwashing?” He encourages young scientists to ask, “If I’m going to take fossil fuel money, am I going to help solve the crisis, or am I merely going to float along on corporate returns that arise from destroying the world as we know it?”
In Princeton’s dissociation announcement in 2022, the university declined to consider climate disinformation, which Oppenheimer considers a serious mistake. “Princeton has the resources to grapple with the complexity of the disinformation problem, and they didn’t,” he says.
Oppenheimer adds that he worked on a faculty panel to “develop what I thought the trustees would accept as a reasonable way to approach the issue of disinformation. And I remain sorely disappointed that they didn’t. I hope they revisit it one of these days.”
Looking to the future, he says, “I don’t know what could be more effective than having the university separating itself from powerful entities in society that lie, deceive, and obfuscate with regard to the climate issue. And they can still do that. That opportunity is theirs whenever they want to pick it up.”