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Scientists working with one of the world’s largest climate research publishers say they’re increasingly alarmed that the company consults with the fossil fuel industry to help increase oil and gas drilling, the Guardian can reveal.
Elsevier, a Dutch company behind many peer-reviewed scientific journals such as The Lancet or Global Environmental Change is also available. One of the top PublishersBooks aimed at increasing fossil fuel production.
For more than a decade, the company has supported the energy industry’s efforts to optimize oil and gas extraction. It commissions editors and journal advisory board members, who are currently employees of top oil companies. Elsevier also sells some of its products Research portalsData services directly to the oil & gas industry to aid “increase the odds of exploration success”.
A number of former and current employees have stated that Elsevier’s relationship with the fossil fuel sector has been challenged by workers for the past one year..
“When I first started, I heard a lot about the company’s climate commitments,” said a former Elsevier journal editor who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity. “Eventually I just realized it was all marketing, which is really upsetting because Elsevier has published all the research it needs to know exactly what to do if it wants to make a meaningful difference.”
What makes Elsevier’s ties to the fossil fuel industry particularly alarming to its critics is that it is one of a handful of companies that publish peer-reviewed climate research. Scientists and academics say they’re concerned that Elsevier’s conflicting business interests risk undermining their work.
Julia Steinberger, a social ecologist and ecological economist at the Université de Lausanne who has published studies in several Elsevier journals, said she was shocked to hear that the company took an active role in expanding fossil fuel extraction.
“Elsevier is the publisher of some of the most important journals in the environmental space,” she said. “They cannot claim ignorance of the facts of climate change and the urgent necessity to move away from fossil fuels.”
She added: “Their business model seems to be to profit from publishing climate and energy science, while disregarding the most basic fact of climate action: the urgent need to move away from fossil fuels.”
Elsevier, and RELX, are committed to supporting the fossil fuel sector as it transitions to clean energy. Elsevier has been a leader in the industry, with its climate pledges. However a spokesperson for the company stated that they aren’t ready to draw a line between transitioning away from fossil fuels as well as the expansion of oil-and-gas extraction. She expressed concern about publishers boycotting or “canceling” oil and gas firms.
“We recognize that we are imperfect and we have to do more, but that shouldn’t negate all of the amazing work we have done over the past 15 years,” Márcia Balisciano, founding global head of corporate responsibility at RELX, told The Guardian.
Elsevier has published more than 2,000 journals, but only seven of them are specifically focused on fossil fuel extraction. Special publications and subsidiaries count for 14. These journals include Upstream Oil and Gas TechnologyShell employs a editor-in chief of the magazine,. Unconventional ResourcesIt is edited by a Chevron researcher. Gulf Publishing, a subsidiary publisher of books, is also managed by the company. This includes titles like The Shale Oil and Gas Handbook Strategies to optimize Petroleum Exploration.
Elsevier also offers consulting services to corporate customers. Elsevier has been marketing for 12 years. Geofacets is a toolTo fossil fuel companies. Geofacets is a combination of thousands of maps and studies that makes it easier to locate and access oil and natural gas reserves.
The company claims the tool cuts research time by 50% and helps identify “Riskier and more remote areas that had previously been inaccessible.”
Top climate scientists, including those published in Elsevier’s own journals, however, say just the opposite must happen in order to avert a climate catastrophe. Limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius or lower requires a Globally, there is a decrease in fossil fuel productionOver 80 percent of all proven reserve are being Left in the ground.
“We will not comment on the practices of individual companies, but any actions actively supporting the expansion of fossil fuel development are indeed inconsistent” with the United Nations’ sustainable development goals, said Sherri Aldis, acting deputy director for the UN department of global communications.
RELX is an Amazingly profitable companyWith Annual revenuesElsevier has brought in about a third of the $9.8bn figure. Balisciano emphasizes that fossil fuel content represents less than 1 percent of Elsevier’s publishing revenue, and less than half of Geofacets’ revenue, which itself only represents around 2 percent of Elsevier’s earnings.
RELX, Elsevier and others say that the bulk of their work supports an energy transition through publications focused on clean energy. “We don’t want to draw a binary and we don’t think you can just flip a switch, but we have been reducing our involvement with fossil fuel activities while increasing the amount of research we publish on climate and clean energy,” said Esra Erkal, executive vice president of communications at Elsevier.
Elsevier does not have to be the only publisher that has developed relationships with fossil fuel executives and climate researchers. Numerous other peer-reviewed climate research publishers have also signed on to the initiative. UN’s Sustainable Development Goals Publishers Compactwhile also partnering in various ways with the oil-and-gas industry.
The UK-based publisher Taylor & Francis, for example, signed the UN pledge and released its own net-zero commitmentsWhile also touting its publishing partnership with “industry leader” ExxonMobil, the oil company Most linkedto impede climate change in the public consciousness. Wiley, another top climate publisher, has also signed on to the sustainability compact while publishing Multiple books and journalsThe program is intended to assist the industry in finding and drilling for more oil & gas.
“It’s problematic,” said Dr. Kimberly Nicholas, associate professor of sustainability science at Lund University in Sweden, noting that while corporate greenwashing is rampant across multiple industries, the publishers of peer-reviewed climate research have a unique responsibility.
“If the same publisher putting out the papers that show definitively we can’t burn any more fossil fuels and stay within this carbon budget is also helping the fossil fuel industry do just that, what does that do to the whole premise of validity around the climate research? That is what’s deeply concerning about these conflicts,” she said.
Ben Franta, a researcher at Stanford University who has also published studies in Elsevier journals, notes that the publisher’s relationship with oil firms is indicative of just how entwined that industry is with so many other aspects of society.
“This all happens without the broader public knowing, and it operates to entrench the industry,” he said. “To effect a rapid replacement of fossil fuels, I believe these entanglements will need to be exposed and reformed.”
Elsevier, on the other hand, stresses the importance of editorial independence. “We wouldn’t want to tell journal editors what they can and can’t publish,” Balisciano said. However, these conflicts often make it difficult for researchers to navigate.
James Dyke (assistant director of the Global Systems Institute at University of Exeter) was surprised that Elsevier would attempt to contradict climate scientists in this manner.
“It’s hard to believe that a company that publishes research about the dangers of the climate and ecological crises is the very same company that actively works with oil and gas companies to extract more fossil fuels, which drags us towards disaster,” he said.
