It is hard to miss the numerous sustainability accolades The University of Manchester has amassed over the last few years. The University came first in the UK and Europe and second in the world for social and environmental impact in 2024, according to the Times Higher Education Impact Rankings. Manchester has also received first place for the ‘2030 Climate Action’ Green Gown Award.
The University’s commitments
The University has committed to ‘absolute zero’ by 2038. This means no production of carbon emissions from operational activities (Scope 1 and 2) and net zero for indirect emissions by 2050 (Scope 3).
The initiatives in place to achieve this are outlined in the University’s Environmental Sustainability Strategy 2023-28. The proposed changes include training staff on sustainability, implementing renewable energy, waste recycling, and increasing biodiversity by 20%. The University has also divested from fossil fuel companies, after years of student protest.
Despite these commitments, the University of Manchester receives the fourth most funding from fossil fuel companies of all UK universities. The University received £3,077,268 from fossil fuel companies between 2022 and 2023.
The University of Manchester has a history of close ties with companies BP and Shell. In 2012 BP established the International Centre for Advanced Materials (BP-ICAM) on the University campus worth $100m. Since DeSmog’s publication, the University signed a new deal with Shell worth over £9 million in November 2023.
The University’s ‘Prosperity Partnership’ with Shell funds research into sustainable energy production. It aims to move away from a reliance on fossil fuels in creating chemicals for everyday products.
University Professor, David Leys, said: “It was natural for us to partner with Shell in tackling sustainable commodity chemical production.”
The Mancunion spoke with Adam Keyworth, a 2023 graduate of Chemical Engineering, to gain an insight into the course syllabus.
Adam told The Mancunion that his course had become significantly more orientated towards sustainability. He said the syllabus “definitely focused on sustainability”. Adam noted that his course featured a compulsory sustainability model in his third year, and that students would receive higher marks for including sustainable practices in their designs.
BP and Shell’s greenwashing
Despite the University’s emphasis on sustainability, ties with companies BP and Shell who have been long accused of greenwashing have raised questions.
The Mancunion spoke with James Dyke, a professor of Earth Science at The University of Exeter, and science and environmental writer. He said: “Manchester is world-leading in material science and engineering. It makes sense for them to be doing a lot of work in the kind of research that we need for the energy transition.
“Where it becomes problematic is when you’ve got one of the world’s largest oil and gas companies funding it. These oil and gas companies are not energy companies.”
James spoke to accusations of greenwashing by both BP and Shell. BP famously popularised the term ‘carbon footprint’ as part of a rebranding scheme in 2004. This placed the emphasis on responsibility for climate change onto the individual, despite BP being the sixth most polluting company in the world.
Despite their widely publicised sustainability goals, BP produced 99 times more energy from oil and gas than from renewable energy in 2023. This is equivalent to the extraction of 2,313 barrels of oil per day. BP has also lowered its greenhouse gas emission reduction target from 35-40% to 20-30% by 2030.
In 2023, Shell invested 4.7 times more in oil and gas than in renewables. This came as CEO Wael Sawan scaled back renewable energy investments. Sawan has since expanded Shell’s oil and gas production equivalent to 200,000 barrels of oil a day. This figure was set to reach the equivalent of 500,000 barrels a day by 2025.
BP and Shell’s investment into the University of Manchester to fund energy transition research and fossil fuel alternatives in manufacturing are not matched by tangible action to scale back fossil fuel production and invest in renewable energy.
James told The Mancunion that fossil fuels companies use such research partnerships with universities to “buy a social licence to continue to operate”.
James said that ties with fossil fuel companies do “really hinder universities’ abilities to argue that they are objective, independent generators of the kind of knowledge that we need in order to avoid potential catastrophe.”
The Mancunion also spoke with local climate activist and coordinator of Manchester Greenpeace, Martin Porter. He told The Mancunion that he felt oil companies have little interest in moving to renewables, and therefore the research they fund might offer “false solutions”.
Martin said this had been seen before in bioenergy, carbon capture, and fracking. The BP International Centre for Advanced Materials conducts research into bioenergy from its site on campus. In a press release in 2012, one of the aims of the centre was listed as carbon capture.
Large amounts of money and research were put into such practices as they were once viewed as more sustainable to traditional drilling and coal. Since then, these have been proved too risky and seen to cause harmful environmental effects. Such practices have also been seen as a diversion of resources away from renewable energy.
Given BP and Shell’s lack of incentives into sustainable change and incompatibility with the University’s award-winning commitment to carbon zero, why does the University maintain these ties?
James said: “The bottom line is they provide a lot of money.” On average, 15% of an institution’s funding comes from research grants. This figure was 20% for the University of Manchester in the 2023-24 academic year.
The Mancunion asked James what he thought of the suggestion that universities should continue to accept funding from fossil fuel companies to accelerate the energy transition. He said these arguments were “entirely fatuous and insult my intelligence”.
Martin said: “No one should be touching them with a barge pole, except to extract money for the compensation for the damage they’ve done to the world, especially in the Global South.”
A spokesperson for The University of Manchester said: “Collaborative partnerships between academia and industry are a vital factor in generating meaningful action to improve current impacts on the world around us. These partnerships are fundamentally based on research to help improve sustainability and supporting the UK in delivering on its clean growth strategy. Creating a sustainable manufacturing environment for the world’s transition to net zero requires collaboration.
“Our research partnerships with BP and Shell take forward important work but represent a very small proportion of the University’s overall funding for research. Any research partnership is entered into voluntarily by all parties and the University retains responsibility for the integrity of all research it conducts, including its consistency with our core value of academic freedom.”
BP and Shell were both contacted for comment, no response was recieved.
