In how many ways is UCT still fossil-fuelled?
Exploring the influence of the fossil fuel industry on campus
On 19 May, we kicked off our ‘Fossil-fuelled UCT?’ enquiries with a co-hosted session in the New Lecture Theatre on Upper Campus. This initiative was kicked off by students of the Green Campus Initiative, and is an effort to explore and investigate the broader dimensions of the influence of the fossil fuel industry on UCT, with a view to potentially turning this into an investigative journalism project. We’re most grateful to Professor Marion Walton of the UCT Centre for Film and Media Studies, and her colleagues and students, for their support.
Introducing this project, Sarah Robyn Farrell outlined the background to the UCT divestment campaign that ultimately led to the commitment UCT made in 2021 to divest its endowment from fossil fuels.
When posing the question: is UCT fossil fuelled beyond its investments (which have already started to be divested from fossil fuels and reinvested in local sustainable alternatives), Sarah acknowledged that there is much not yet known, inviting the students to join in on investigating. “Here’s what we do know,” she said. “There is a trend, there are ties and there is influence,” citing some of the issues that led to asking this question:
The fossil fuel industry has played a significant role in influencing academia at Harvard and Princeton in the US, among other campuses.
The UCT Environmental and Geographical Sciences (EGS) building used to be called the SHELL EGS building. (We know the links between UCT, Shell, and other fossil fuel companies like SASOL go deeper than this. How far, we do not know).
There have been instances where fossil fuel companies have funded student bursaries at UCT and there is indication that they have funded research too.
Stephen Horn then described the scope and influence of the fossil fuel industry through the lens of our Clean Creatives SA campaign: a campaign which aims to bring together leading SA media agencies, their employees, and industry clients to address the SA ad and PR industry’s work with the fossil fuels that are the principal cause of climate breakdown.
One of his slides showed powerfully how the greenwashing of the fossil fuel industry often begins in academia, with academics co-opted or neutralised via fossil fuel industry funding.
Horn also cited an investigation from the BMJ academic journal which showed how the fossil gas industry indirectly funded the MIT Energy Initiative which produced a study showing that gas could act as a bridge fuel from coal and oil to renewable energy. This paper served as the launchpad for the US fracking boom. According to the BMJ article, this was a case of fossil fuel funded academia shifting national policy:
Bolstered by the MIT study, the narrative that “gas was green” took hold in the US. The next year, President Obama referenced the findings in his State of the Union address, and MIT’s Ernest Moniz, who oversaw the report, was appointed secretary of energy, kicking off a fracking boom. Today,we know that report had many flaws. “Natural gas has been portrayed as a bridge to the future,”wrote medical experts in a 2020 essay in the New England Journal of Medicine. “The data now show that it is only a tether to the past.”
Once the presentations were complete, a discussion was opened between the presenters and those who attended. Anecdotal stories emerged. Emotions were shared and concerns raised around the importance that the transition away from fossil fuels centre justice.
Mini case studies
Sasol and UCT 1: One mini-case study that emerged in the course of discussions is Sasol’s sponsorship of the touchstone South Africa bird guide, “Sasol Birds of Southern Africa”. Wind and solar energy projects are often opposed on the grounds that they cause direct harm to bird life – but the coal industry appears to be far more liable for such direct damages, even before the impacts of climate change on biodiversity are factored in – and those impacts include being a very significant contributor to the imminent extinction of our iconic African penguins, which are likely to die out within 20 years. We’ve reached out to Struik/PenguinRandomHouse, publishers of the Sasol guide, to ask whether they’ve looked into sponsors that are less destructive of biodiversity.
Sasol and UCT 2: Sasol and UCT researchers are collaborating on green hydrogen research. This might sound like a good thing – and might be a good thing – but fossil fuel companies have a well-established habit of using a small portion of green R&D spending to greenwash/distract from continuing massive expenditure on business as usual, and this might be yet another example. There is also a risk that green hydrogen megaprojects will negatively affect communities, as is the case in Boegoebaai, where land conflicts have already erupted about a proposed hydrogen export facility.
Law of Mineral and Petroleum extraction and use: “The NRF/DST SARChI Research Chair: Mineral Law in Africa offers a specialised LLM in the Law of Mineral and Petroleum Extraction and Use, in the Faculty of Law at the University of Cape Town.” To what extent does this area of study enable continued fossil fuel extraction, and to what extent does it challenge it?
Chemical engineering: Again, to what extent does this area of study enable continued fossil fuel extraction, and to what extent does it challenge it or open up prospects for going beyond it?
The UCT Retirement Fund: Benefitting academics and other staff, the UCT Retirement Fund is separate to the university endowment. Typically, most collective investments in SA include fossil fuel companies. We know that the UCTRF has taken some steps towards responsible investment practices, but it’s unclear how far these go, and whether they are continuing and renewing these efforts.
Staff benefits: A UCT staffer who attended made the point that the main university health insurance provider, Discovery Health, offers significant fuel cash back benefits at partner fossil fuel companies, BP and Shell. He said these kinds of incentives make it difficult to disentangle the university fully from fossil fuel companies, despite the university’s commitment to divest.
University transport: UCT’s bus network still relies on fossil fuel powered buses, meanwhile the University of Johannesburg is leading the way by starting to include electric buses in its fleet. Is there a timeline to decarbonise UCT’s buses and incentivise cycling, walking and other fossil fuel free transport at UCT?
Conclusion
Because fossil fuels touch every part of our modern society, it’s almost inevitable that their influence would be felt in many spheres of academic life. As we proceed with this project, we don’t wish to shame anyone, so please do come forward with your examples of fossil influence, even if you feel personally implicated. We’re all still caught up in the fossil economy one way or another, and identifying its influences is the first step towards extricating ourselves. Our focus will be overwhelmingly on institutional issues, not personal or individual ones.
Students! Take action
Please research and write a short blog (up to or around 700 words) or vlog (2-3 mins) describing one area in which the fossil fuel industry has continuing influence at UCT (or other SA universities). This could explore one of the case studies listed above, or be based on other examples uncovered in your own research. Interviews with academics in the areas we have identified would be a good basis for these projects. Please feel free to reach out and discuss your research plans with us before or during the mini-project, if you wish.
We’ll aim to publish these case studies here, and if we gather enough information, consolidate them into a single investigative journalism report in a few months time.