June 30, 2026
Tell Top Universities: Get Big Oil Out of Climate Science
Big Oil has spent more than 30 years funding climate research at prestigious universities. And they've used those dollars to steer us all in the wrong direction.
A new ProPublica and Drilled investigation reveals how fossil fuel companies used academic partnerships to shape policy and keep profiting from pollution. At Princeton, BP helped fund climate research for decades — and executives used their influence to push momentum toward carbon capture instead of effective solutions that could hurt Big Oil’s profits.
We're asking the Association of American Universities to set new standards to protect climate science from fossil fuel influence. The AAU represents many of the most powerful research schools in the country and its members have national influence over academic policy.
Princeton is not alone. Fossil fuel-linked funding and influence have been documented at Stanford, Columbia, MIT, Harvard, George Washington University, and other major schools.
Students, faculty, frontline communities, and the public deserve climate research they can trust. Science should serve the truth — not the PR strategy of corporations that spent decades delaying climate action.
The AAU may not control every university board, but it can set a powerful standard by urging member schools to reject fossil fuel funding for climate, energy, environmental, and public policy research — and by demanding full transparency around fossil fuel-linked gifts, grants, contracts, advisory roles, and research partnerships.
And if the AAU finally sets meaningful guidance on climate research, we will be better equipped to hold individual schools accountable when they let Big Oil buy the academic papers and policy cover it wants.
Thanks for everything you do.
The Juggernaut Project
