Credit: (AP Photo/Alastair Grant, File)WASHINGTON — The fossil energy giant BP has cultivated a decades-long relationship with a Princeton University research program to help its business and bolster its standing in the fields of climate change, public policy and technology, work that culminated in an influential study published in 2020.
BP paid for that study, widely cited in environmental policy circles in Washington, D.C., which laid a foundation for a federal climate bill Congress passed and President Joe Biden signed into law in 2022.
Researchers at the Princeton program, the Carbon Mitigation Initiative, have also provided confidential annual climate change reports to BP, advising the firm about a range of topics, from how a warming world will disrupt business to global climate perils like “widespread disruption of food production, multi-meter sea-level rise from loss of a continental ice sheet, and widespread extinctions,” an April 2016 report to BP warned.
These revelations and other behind-the-scenes details emerged from an ongoing congressional investigation Democrats began in 2019 into climate denial tactics from large oil and gas companies, as well as industry efforts to blunt government steps to limit the burning of fossil fuels, oil, coal and gas.
When they were in the majority in the House during the previous Congress, Democrats subpoenaed records from four major fossil energy companies and two lobbying groups that represent the industry — BP, Chevron, Exxon and Shell, plus the American Petroleum Institute and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Financial support
For a recent Senate hearing, Democrats released a 65-page summary documenting climate denial and obstruction from oil and gas companies, including steps to use prestigious colleges and universities for their benefit, pressuring journalists reporting on the industry’s climate positions and tracking climate activists.
Large fossil fuel companies like BP gave about $700 million to research programs at prestigious schools between 2010 and 2020, according to the investigation.
BP and the Carbon Mitigation Initiative at Princeton began their relationship more than 20 years ago, and an internal company file investigators obtained shows the company paid the group between $2.1 and $2.6 million every year between 2012 and 2017.
‘[i]f the Presidential elections go the way it looks now, I would not be surprised to see some of our friends in senior government policymaking roles, as well!’ — BP executive referring to Princeton University researchers
Princeton spokeswoman Jennifer Morrill said BP does not pick projects for researchers to pursue, adding that the company gives the Carbon Mitigation Initiative “an annual contribution that is completely controlled by Princeton academics.”
BP has “no involvement in the selection of specific research projects for support, in the execution of the research projects, nor in the presentation of final results,” Morrill said.
Representatives of BP did not reply to questions about the company’s relationship with Princeton.
A way to pressure Biden administration?
The 2020 study, about how the U.S. could eliminate its carbon emissions, or at least balance them out by using “carbon capture” — a rare and expensive technology to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere — cost “just under” $2 million.
Credit: (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)Before the 2020 presidential election, one BP executive said the firm’s relationship with Princeton was “becoming increasingly synergistic,” adding that “[i]f the Presidential elections go the way it looks now, I would not be surprised to see some of our friends in senior government policymaking roles, as well!”
At least one BP worker viewed the 2020 study as a potential entry point to pressure the incoming Biden administration.
On Dec. 7, 2020, BP communications executive Omayma Khan after Biden had won election, noted that the study “clearly plays to Biden’s green agenda” and that Princeton climate researchers were “already advising Biden’s transition team.” As a result, BP could “leverage the study with the USG,” Robert Stout, a BP policy official based in Washington, D.C., said in an email to colleagues, using an apparent acronym for the U.S. government.
Ten days before the report was released, public-relations staffers at Princeton briefed BP employees in Britain and the U.S. about the report, its contents and when it would be shared with reporters, both national and local.
‘Align with key elements’ of BP strategy
JP Fielder, another BP communications staffer, said one of the goals should be to “highlight how the Princeton findings align with key elements of bp’s strategy, including our focus on CCUS, hydrogen and key renewables, including wind and solar.”
The U.S. has a few dozen such sites either running or in development, according to the Clean Air Task Force, a nonpartisan climate advocacy group, covering a sliver of the country’s tens of thousands of power plants.
Fossil fuel companies are broadly supportive of carbon capture because it will allow them to continue drilling for, extracting and selling oil and gas, the drivers of human-fueled climate change.
Before the net-zero study was released, BP knew what would be in it. The report would “recommend infrastructure program to advance net zero policies with emphasis on CCUS — building ‘backbone’ of pipelines to transport carbon from emitters to the Permian and Gulf Coast sites,” one BP staff member wrote peers in July 2020, referencing the Permian oil patch in west Texas.
Poll: Climate change, meh
Like rival companies and large governments, BP has set a goal of eliminating its carbon emissions by 2050.
But that timeline is slower than what climate scientists say is necessary to avert the worst of climate change by keeping global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, and many of the world’s largest emitters — Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, the European Union, Indonesia, India, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the U.S. — are off track from meeting that target, according to the Climate Action Tracker, an independent project that monitors climate goals.
Long an issue in the American West, the threat of wildfires has engulfed the U.S. in recent years, including New Jersey.
Last year was the warmest year ever recorded, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and last month was the warmest April on record, NOAA said.
In the face of years’ worth of mounting science, less than half, or 46%, of the U.S. public think climate change is a “very serious” problem, a Monmouth University poll released Monday found.
Americans between 18 and 34 have been part of a dip in concern about this issue. Only 50% of that group view climate change as “very serious,” down from two-thirds in 2021.
— Editor’s note: This story was updated to correct the link in the reference to discussions between BP employees and Princeton public-relations staffers and researchers. It was also edited to clarify that briefing.
