To an engineer who wanted to make an environmental impact, Stanford University seemed like the perfect place to pursue a graduate degree. Touting buzzwords such as “interdisciplinary” and “community-oriented,” I could feel that this would be the best university to actually do what I spent my undergraduate years telling myself I was preparing for: using science to help communities impacted by the climate crisis. Within my first year at Stanford, I met my incredible advisor who not only believed in the urgency of working to fight climate change, but also had the knowledge and lab to actually do so. It was only at the beginning of my second year that the overwhelming confusion hit.
The blow was delivered by a research proposal from my advisor. It was actually a really fascinating research proposal (at least to a recently converted semiconductor geek) on designing a new type of device using ideas from fundamental physics. But, underneath this tantalizing title was the singular line: “a proposition to apply for funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).” That couldn’t be right. DARPA is the research and development organization of the US Department of Defense (DOD), which is often cited as the “World’s Biggest Climate Change Enabler” due to its whopping 1.2 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions per year (a number that is greater than that of some countries including Portugal and Denmark).
As I did more research, I became increasingly shocked. I realized that even our lab’s most environmentally-oriented projects receive funding from defense, and that DOD funding of research amounts to around $100 billion annually. From my friends pursuing environmental impact based PhDs in other departments such as chemistry, earth sciences, and geophysics, I learned that, besides defense, oil and gas are also substantial funders of graduate level research. Between 2010 and 2020 alone, fossil fuel giants such as ExxonMobil provided 27 of the top research universities in the US with over $677 million in funding.
More sinisterly, I learned how similar environmental research and research in defense, oil, and gas really are. The same devices I develop to more efficiently deploy renewable energy can be used to more efficiently deploy weapons. The same models my peers in geophysics develop to better understand how oil spills impact local habitats can be used to better understand oil and gas extraction. These learnings have forced me and many other climate change fighting early-career graduate students to wonder: is there any hope that our research will actually have significant positive impacts on the environment? Or will our research ultimately be used to inflict harm upon people and the environment?
In tackling these questions, I sought advice from professors directly working on the climate crisis such as Jonathan Fan, an electrical engineering professor at Stanford working on decarbonizing chemical reactors used in fossil fuel industries. Speaking to Professor Fan forced me to grapple with a belief I did not realize I held so deeply: I saw the DOD and various oil and gas companies to be fundamentally opposed to positive environmental change.
It’s not difficult to understand where these beliefs came from. Just considering defense, US Military vehicles alone account for five percent of the world’s total carbon emissions each year. This number is a lower bound estimate - DOD carbon emissions reports have a long history of being extremely scattered and confusing, and there is speculation that the DOD does not include overseas emissions in these reports, despite the fact that the US is currently a major weapon provider in at least two overseas wars. Even worse is that, until the 2015 Paris Agreement, there were absolutely no checks on the US military’s climate impacts, and defense emissions were labeled as “exempt” from any regulations.
Similarly, Oil and gas exploration has contributed to the severe degradation of many animal habitats and migratory patterns and has led to significant oil spills. On top of this, companies such as ExxonMobil and Shell each release around 100 million metric tons of carbon emissions to support their operations each year.
However, the environmental impacts and motivations of these carbon-heavy industries are far from black-and-white. It turns out that both the DOD and oil and gas industries actually contribute significantly to climate and renewable energy research as well. One motivation for this is that climate change directly impacts the operations of these entities. Sea-level rise threatens naval bases and off-shore oil rigs, and warming climates leaves many locations unfit for on-shore military operations and oil drilling. As early as 2003, the DOD published a report that cited human-caused climate change as a major threat to national security, even amidst the hyper-prevalent climate change denial during the Bush administration.
Additionally, players in these industries have faced significant backlash for their fossil fuel consumption. Resultantly, the DOD and oil giants such as ExxonMobil and Shell have set goals to achieve carbon neutrality. Achieving these goals while maintaining their daily operations relies on research and innovation, which is exactly why both big oil and big defense pump funding into graduate research in the forms of fellowships and grants.
Apparently, there is much more nuance to defense, oil, and gas corporations beyond my strong initial impressions. In these industries, Professor Fan explains that “there are many people who are very well intentioned and understand the need for this transition” to a renewable future. But even given funding for environmental work and well-intentioned employees, there is still the fact that these industries contribute significantly to annual carbon emissions. These industries have also been known to commit questionable acts with regards to the environment in the forms of practices such as fabricating carbon credits to appeal to public opinion and creating mass levels of destruction on local environments.
What is clear is that, for better or for worse, U.S. defense, oil, and gas conglomerates have been and will continue to be important players both for environmental innovation and the ultimate fate of our climate. The question for aspiring researchers then becomes, even if our direct research projects are not funded by defense or oil and gas, given this context, how do we make sure our research and environmental research in general has the impacts we desire with minimal undesirable outcomes?
More than One Answer
Perhaps as expected, my conversations with life-long researchers has shown me that there are many different, often conflicting, ways of contending with these difficult questions. Some professors at universities like Stanford actually see the infrastructure setup by these big stakeholders as a prime opportunity to enact positive environmental change.
Professor Fan is one such professor. His work, which is largely funded by Shell, centers around using a heating mechanism known as magnetic induction to decarbonize chemical reactors used for the combustion of fossil fuels. His goal is not to replace oil and gas companies, but rather to provide technology and incentives that work within the infrastructures these companies already have: “It's not that you start a company to replace [oil and gas]....you have to work with them, through your research and through communication, to educate them on pathways that they can take so that new investments they make can be sustainable and profitable.”
To actually perform research that incentivizes oil and gas companies to transition to greener technologies, it is not enough to just research something that is scientifically interesting. Rather, Professor Fan believes that a “complete mindset shift” is required. Every decision of the research process - from the materials used to the production tools and time required - must be made with the goal of making technologies that are not only sustainable but are also economically competitive and scalable to the operations of these companies. Professor Fan fondly refers to this goal oriented mindset as “reverse engineering.”
The ultimate goal of this research beyond developing the scalable and cost-effective technology that can decarbonize the oil and gas combustion industry is to change the industry from the inside, which is a practice that many energy researchers are increasingly adopting. Professor Fan’s hope is that “some fraction of people from my research group go work for [oil and gas] companies … so that they can help accelerate change from within those organizations.”
However, some professors such as Stanford’s own Professor Elliot White still see accepting funding from such industries as morally ambiguous. While he does not fault other researchers who do so, Professor White is careful to not accept funding from organizations he does not align with in his own research.
His research focuses on studying and making predictive models regarding the effects of sea-level rise and saltwater intrusion on wetlands and surrounding communities. But without the resources, infrastructure, and clear potential for carbon reductions provided by these big carbon industry stakeholders, Professor White needs to develop a different pathway in order for this research to be impactful.
He has found this through centering his research on the perspectives of community members most affected by wetland changes. This effort has been far from passive - Professor White has restructured much of his wetlands research so that it can be both based on and catered towards community inputs. A major part of this is holding space for consistent community conversations. In these conversations, Professor White emphasizes that an open mind is key: “even if you have some expert knowledge on the topic, [you need to] understand and be willing to hear their opinions, their perspective, because there may be something in there that you didn't know, and [that] may completely change a question.”
Ultimately, the goal is to collaborate with these community members so that their opinions are involved in every step of the research. Professor White urges young researchers to strive towards “collaboration that's more than just ‘I came in with the idea and you all are just helping me on the human side’, but actual true collaboration where ‘we're building this up from the beginning together.’”
This community-based research not only makes Professor White’s wetland models more accurate and applicable to human populations, but it also helps setup relationships with many community organizations. These organizations are exactly the ones that can adopt the models and ideas developed by Professor White’s research group and help pipeline them towards the development of policies regarding wetland conservation and restoration.
Down With Science in Isolation
Consistent between the research approaches and topics of these two professors is the unwavering belief that impactful science cannot and should not exist in isolation. Without including the needs and incentives specific to companies like Shell, Professor Fan’s research group would never be able to use their decarbonization efforts to break into the fossil fuel industry. Similarly, without a continuous effort to understand the unique experiences different community members have with wetland changes, Professor White’s models would be unfit for understanding the human effects caused by sea level rise and saltwater intrusion.
Because the premise of a scientific PhD is to complete in-depth research on an extremely specific topic, it often requires extra effort to broaden the scope of our research. This can take the form of attending seminars and talking to researchers outside of your field, listening to and getting involved with environmental activists, and perhaps even seeking industry internships focusing on climate change. As Professor White puts it, “at least understanding peripheral [ideas] will give you more clarity on the thing that you're actually staring at”
In my own research practice, I am beginning to realize the importance of understanding the broader role the school’s investments and policies play in my research funding and potential impacts. Getting involved in the Stanford Graduate Student Union and Stanford divest protesters has helped me find pathways to advocate for an environment most conducive to my research having the impacts I desire.
Even though completing research with the goal of having an environmental impact can be quite onerous, there is no better time than now to do so. At Stanford and at universities around the world, we have graduate students who are engineers, artists, activists, and thinkers in many multitudes of disciplines all with the common goal of fighting the climate crisis. Professor Fan leaves me with the reminder that “it's an incredibly exciting and important time…the next one-to-two generations of grad students are going to be the most important to innovate and scale up solutions.”
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Nish Sinha is a PhD student studying Electrical Engineering. Her research focuses on using a class of materials called wide bandgap semiconductors to design community-minded electrical devices that can better support a renewable energy powered future. When she’s not procrastinating in the lab, you can find her rock climbing or eating mac and cheese.
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