Harvard professor lobbied SEC on behalf of oil agency that pays her lavishly, emails present | Surroundings

The Harvard environmental regulation professor on the centre of a conflict-of-interest row lobbied the regulator on behalf of the oil and fuel firm that pays her greater than $350,000 a 12 months, a brand new investigation can reveal.

Emails seen by the Guardian and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) present that Jody Freeman facilitated a gathering between a director on the Securities and Trade Fee (SEC) and ConocoPhillips, one of many world’s worst polluters that’s pushing to weaken forthcoming local weather laws. The corporate’s Willow drilling challenge in Alaska was lately authorised by the Biden administration, regardless of scientists warning it will likely be catastrophic for international heating.

Freeman, who has served on the ConocoPhillips board since 2012, vouched for 2 of the fossil-fuel firm’s executives in emails in 2021, which she signed off as a Harvard regulation professor. Failing to reveal her place on the firm seems to breach college coverage.

Freeman informed the Guardian that she requested the assembly on behalf of a Harvard colleague, one other regulation professor who was additionally an SEC director on the time, and that her intervention didn’t violate conflict-of-interest guidelines. She insisted her function as director of the oil and fuel firm was “frequent information”.

However disclosure of the emails have triggered recent requires Freeman to chop ties with ConocoPhillips amid mounting anger on the corrupting affect of the fossil-fuel trade on US college campuses.

Nathan Phillips, professor of earth and surroundings at Boston College, mentioned he was “shocked however not shocked” by the revelations, and known as for Freeman to resign instantly from the ConocoPhillips board – or at the least by Harvard’s high-profile local weather week of motion starting on 8 Might.

“We get conditioned by the circles we transfer in. I hope [exposing] this battle can wake Prof Freeman out of the fog of seize and assist them to regain their bearing,” Phillips mentioned.

The revelations come days after the Guardian reported that Freeman received a prestigious grant to analysis company local weather pledges, which led to colleagues and college students elevating questions in regards to the reputational injury and battle of curiosity posed by her fossil-fuel ties.

Kyla Bennett, director of science coverage with Public Workers for Environmental Accountability (Peer), whose work with whistleblowers has uncovered trade’s affect with regulators, Congress, academia and the media, mentioned: “Our present ecological predicament means we will not afford to let issues like this slide.

“Historical past reveals us that the tobacco, gun, chemical and fossil gasoline trade will greenwash and lie and deform solely to make more cash. They’re retailers of doubt, pushing science denial and shopping for scientists, legal professionals, and school professors to attain their targets. We can not waste time making an attempt to vary trade from the within.”

Freeman is a revered identify in environmental regulation and sustainability, serving as an adviser on power and local weather change within the Obama White Home and the Biden administration’s local weather motion plan. She based Harvard’s environmental and power regulation program, and is at the moment co-chair of the elite establishment’s sustainability committee.

Her Harvard biography states that “Freeman is an unbiased director on the board of administrators of ConocoPhillips, the place she is a crucial advisor on local weather change and the power transition”. It doesn’t state that as a paid board member, Freeman has a duty to behave in the monetary curiosity of ConocoPhillips. (Freeman is compensated for her function as firm director in wage and shares.)

Freeman’s emails to the SEC, despatched in 2021 and obtained through a Freedom of Data Act request, had been despatched after the regulator introduced proposals to require corporations to publish greenhouse-gas emissions.

The emails present that she helped arrange a gathering the place ConocoPhillips executives may current their place in non-public earlier than the regulator publicly requested enter from traders and corporations.

In an electronic mail to the performing director on the SEC, Freeman praised Dominic Macklon, a ConocoPhillips government, and Lloyd Visser, head of sustainability: “I can let you know from private expertise that these are the fitting individuals to assist with this train … They’re vastly educated, considerate, and involved in fixing issues – I can promise that you’re going to get excessive worth from this engagement.”

She added: “ConocoPhillips is well known because the oil and fuel trade chief on local weather associated disclosure … Lloyd himself is very influential on these points … and each he and Dominic – because the senior government within the firm with duty for this transient – are intimately conscious of the monetary sector’s curiosity in these points.”

However Freeman’s emails to the SEC then director don’t disclose her affiliation with the oil and fuel big. This omission seems to violate Harvard coverage that states: “School members should make public disclosures of economic pursuits in associated outdoors entities … when cheap members of the viewers would give weight to these pursuits in assessing the opinions, recommendation, or work they’re presenting.”

Within the emails, Freeman additionally mentioned that Visser chaired the local weather committee on the American Petroleum Institute (API), an influential fossil-fuel foyer group whose mission is to “affect public coverage in assist of a robust, viable US oil and pure fuel trade”.

Having proposed an preliminary assembly with the SEC that she would attend herself, Freeman added that “a few briefings could be effectively well worth the time”.

In an announcement, Freeman mentioned that she made the request on behalf of John Coates, a Harvard regulation and economics professor after which director of finance on the SEC, who requested her for contacts as he was conscious of her function as director at ConocoPhillips. In an electronic mail, Coates supported her account.

Freeman added: “I’m compliant with the college’s battle of curiosity guidelines, and I disclose my board work prominently in my bio, my webpage, with media, and in my courses … Shifting the world to a low-carbon future as quick as attainable and forcefully addressing the large challenges posed by local weather change is my core motivation for all my work. My function as an unbiased director on the board of ConocoPhillips is about serving to advance the transition to a low-carbon economic system.”

The corporate didn’t reply to requests for remark, however SEC filings recommend Freeman is seen as an asset. “Ms Freeman’s experience in environmental and power regulation and coverage and her distinctive experiences in shaping federal environmental and power coverage, particularly in issues essential to ConocoPhillips’ operations, allow her to supply invaluable perception into our insurance policies and practices.”

The SEC put ahead its proposed local weather disclosure guidelines final 12 months, which included necessities for corporations to publish their direct and oblique emissions, and the chance posed to their enterprise by the local weather emergency. Oil and fuel corporations have reportedly stepped up lobbying efforts in an try and dilute the proposed guidelines, although most traders are in favour, an evaluation by Harvard Legislation Faculty discovered.

ConocoPhillips has since despatched its official response to the SEC, opposing the disclosure guidelines – that are anticipated to be finalised within the coming months, greater than two years after they had been first proposed. The agency’s Willow challenge in Alaska is an environmentally damaging decades-long drilling enterprise that can launch tens of millions of extra tons of planet-warming emissions into the environment.

“Regardless of a well-honed PR effort and polished local weather pledges, ConocoPhillips is lobbying behind the scenes to intestine the SEC’s local weather disclosure rule. It undermines Harvard’s local weather ambitions if a college sustainability chief is utilizing the college’s status to run cowl for an oil firm’s greenwashing efforts,” mentioned Kelly Mitchell, senior oil and fuel analyst at Documented, an accountability watchdog.

The emails additionally elevate awkward questions for Harvard.

Harvard acquired $21m from the fossil-fuel trade between 2010 and 2020, based on Knowledge for Progress, among the many highest of American elite tutorial establishments.

However amid rising stress from college students and workers to divest from fossil fuels, the Ivy League college promised to not use its $39bn endowment to make any new direct investments in corporations that discover or additional develop fossil gasoline reserves, and pledged to be “fossil fuel-free by 2050 and fossil fuel-neutral by 2026”.

Its new Salata Institute for Local weather and Sustainability goes even additional, stating that it “is not going to settle for funds from, or associate with, any firm that doesn’t share the purpose of shifting our international economic system away from fossil fuels”.

But the Salata Institute awarded Freeman a grant to analysis company net-zero pledges – which some environmentalists have condemned as greenwashing – regardless of her monetary and fiduciary ties to ConocoPhillips.

“Giving her management roles at Harvard whereas permitting her to stay on ConocoPhillips’ company board raises critical doubts about Harvard’s dedication to fossil gasoline independence,” mentioned Carolyn Becker, professor of drugs at Harvard Medical Faculty and an outspoken critic of conflicts of curiosity.

Becker additionally known as on Freeman to resign from the oil firm, arguing that her fiduciary obligation to advocate in favor of shareholders, progress, and earnings was incompatible together with her roles as a “credible, revered, and unbiased local weather chief and researcher at Harvard”.

Final week, pupil marketing campaign group Fossil Gasoline Divest Harvard wrote an open letter to Freeman urging her to resign from ConocoPhillips. “Select your commitments to the local weather over your commitments to an trade whose affect on academia and on the world has been nothing however poisonous.”