Major Win on Transparency: Affiliate Funding Details Released

Since the launch of the Doerr School last year, we have been advocating for dissociation from fossil fuel companies. A first step in this process is transparency about how much fossil fuel money is flowing into the school and what it is funding. 

Several days ago, the first set of funding data was publicly released! More will be released shortly. These data were gathered by the Committee on Funding of Energy Research and Education (CFERE), established last December under pressure from us. While these data cover only affiliate programs, excluding gifts and sponsored research, this is nonetheless a major step forward in transparency. 

What do these new data show? In 2022, the total Doerr School affiliate funding amounted to just under $10 million, with the most funding going to the Natural Gas Initiative (covered previously). In a recent fireside chat at Stanford, alongside actress Jane Fonda and billionaire investor Tom Steyer, climate activist Bill McKibben specifically called out the Stanford Natural Gas Initiative for ‘“greenwashing” the world’s “most dangerous” industry,’” as reported by the Stanford Daily. 

As we have outlined in past newsletters, oil and gas companies get to brand their propaganda with the Stanford name, use Stanford’s name in public-facing statements, get a preferential recruitment pipeline, shape the research agenda, and get their representatives invited to teach undergraduates — all for $10 million per year. 

Let’s put $10 million per year in perspective. This is 0.018% of ExxonMobil’s profits in 2022. It is just a bit more than the cost of a 30-second SuperBowl ad. It is 12% of the Doerr School’s founding endowment’s expected annual returns, assuming 5% annual growth. It is 0.8% of Stanford University’s annual payout in the 2019-2020 fiscal year. 

What does this tell us? Oil and gas companies are meddling in Stanford’s research, dragging grad students into a dying industry, and purchasing Stanford’s prestige, all for the price of a high-value advertisement. 

If the Doerr School administration were actually serious about creating a true school of sustainability, a school that did things in a meaningfully different way from the past, they have more than enough money to create a phaseout fund replacing all of the fossil funding coming into Doerr School affiliate programs.