Pupil local weather activists from Singapore’s Nanyang Technological College (NTU) have raised concern a few new company laboratory for low carbon applied sciences backed by oil and gasoline main ExxonMobil.
The ExxonMobil-NTU-A*STAR Company Lab, which launched on the college on 26 April, has been billed as a method for trade and academia to work collectively on options that “assist decrease carbon emissions, contribute to useful resource effectivity, and assist construct a extra sustainable future.”
The S$60 million (US$44 million) lab’s areas of focus embody carbon seize and carbonation expertise for trade by-products and changing methane into hydrogen and strong carbon supplies.
NTUIDivest’s social media marketing campaign challenges NTU over the credibility of the ExxonMobil-NTU-A*STAR Company Lab. Picture: NTUDivest
NTUDivest, which is a part of the Singapore-wide College students for a Fossil Free Future (S4F) group that campaigns in opposition to oil and gasoline corporations’ affect over the training system, mentioned NTU’s partnership with ExxonMobil was “extremely regarding.”
“Given ExxonMobil’s present and previous environmental observe file worldwide, we’re extraordinarily uncertain that funding of Singapore’s clear power transition must be so closely funded and influenced by one of the infamous mega oil corporations.”
“From local weather breakdown to poisonous environmental air pollution, ExxonMobil isn’t any stranger to taking part in down their results,” the group mentioned in an Instagram publish. The #ExxonKnew marketing campaign has identified that the oil firm has lengthy recognized in regards to the risks of local weather change and has lobbied aggressively in opposition to local weather motion.
NTUDivest referred to as on their college to contemplate the battle of curiosity in an oil and gasoline firm funding a low carbon options lab.
It publicly questioned the college on whether or not the lab’s decrease carbon fuels could be accompanied by a discount in carbon-intensive applied sciences and merchandise and subsequently emissions.
The lab’s different focus areas embody the applying of carbon in concrete and the conversion of biomass into decrease greenhouse gasoline emission fuels.
NTUDivest additionally challenged the college to be clear on how the affect of the lab’s options could be assessed and monitored.
“We’re bored with trade pursuits helming our public universities,” NTUDivest mentioned.
NTU, Exxon reply
NTU instructed Eco-Enterprise that working with trade would “translate information into options that can profit society by supporting the inexperienced power transition and different areas of sustainability.”
The college mentioned it might decide its strategy to assessing the affect of recent applied sciences “as its analysis programmes take form.”
The lab was fashioned by means of a grant scheme below Singapore’s Analysis, Innovation and Enterprise 2025 (RIE2025) plan to extend the bottom of analysis and innovation corporations in Singapore, NTU defined.
ExxonMobil instructed Eco-Enterprise that its function within the lab was to speculate “in actual options which might be decreasing emissions in the present day.”
“Many of those potential options are nonetheless nascent and require additional analysis and improvement to unravel the real-world challenges of scale-up and commercialisation,” an organization spokesperson mentioned.
“Our groups are working to fulfill native and regional wants for secure provides of power and important merchandise, whereas additionally decreasing greenhouse gasoline emissions in help of a lower-emission future.”
“This can require unprecedented innovation and collaboration at scale,” it mentioned, including that there was no “one dimension matches all” resolution to reducing emissions.
ExxonMobil turned the final world oil tremendous main to set a web zero goal in 2022, pledging to spend US$15 billion over the subsequent 5 years on low-carbon efforts and emissions reductions, and obtain web zero by 2050.
The plan was criticised as unambitious because it didn’t embody Scope 3, or full worth chain emissions, which make up the majority of the corporate’s huge local weather footprint.
S4F has argued that corporations corresponding to ExxonMobil, Shell and BP have infiltrated Singapore’s tertiary training system to advertise their manufacturers, recruit new expertise, and achieve social approval. The presence of Large Oil manufacturers on campus restricts educational freedoms and the power of universities to freely criticise the environmental affect of fossil fuels corporations, S4F mentioned.
ExxonMobil has sponsored free music live shows at Nationwide College of Singapore, the nation’s largest college, because the Eighties, and has additionally backed conservation programmes and a cellular fabrication laboratory at Singapore College of Know-how and Design.
ExxonMobil’s largest refinery exterior of the US is situated in Singapore, and the agency wields appreciable affect in Singaporean society. Its former Asia-Pacific chairman was a member of a taskforce of trade leaders appointed to revitalise the economic system after the Covid-19 downturn.
In October, S4F launched a report that discovered that Singapore’s universities have change into extra entrenched with Large Oil since they began campaigning for a fossil fuel-free training system in 2017. Town-state’s universities have largely ignored calls from S4F to divest from fossil fuels, and discover different sponsors for scholarships and educational prizes, the group mentioned.
The launch of the ExxonMobil-NTU-A*STAR Company Lab emerges 4 months after a local weather tech startup birthed by Shell to “advance the power transition” drew criticism for greenwashing the corporate’s fossil gas extraction actions. Named Onward, the Shell-backed agency focuses extra on bettering oil and gasoline outcomes fairly than clear tech options, evaluation by an investigative journalism platform claimed.
