Oxford University refused to divest its 2 billion-pound ($3 billion) endowment from fossil fuel companies, though it left open the possibility of future action.
By deciding to forgo action for now, Oxford joined Harvard and Yale universities, which control the biggest endowments in the US, in sidestepping requests to remove oil and coal companies from their investment funds.
About 200 institutions worldwide have pledged to scale back investments in polluting industries, including Glasgow University in Scotland and Stanford University in California.
A move in favor of divestment by Oxford would have marked a major victory for environmental activists seeking to stigmatize oil and coal companies in the way South Africa and tobacco companies have previously been targeted.
After a discussion on Monday, the university’s governing board said it needed to keep discussing the request raised by students.
“Last October’s Oxford University Student Union resolution has raised an important and multi-faceted matter which requires thorough consideration,” the university said in a statement Monday. “The University Council had a good discussion of the issues and agreed to consider the matter further at a future meeting.”
The campaigners at Fossil Free are backed by students, the Guardian newspaper’s environmental columnist George Monbiot and Jeremy Leggett, founder of the photovoltaic panel installer Solarcentury.
They’re seeking to replicate the success of anti-apartheid campaigners in the 1980s, who used divestment as a way of pressuring South Africa to end state-sanctioned discrimination.
“This decision could make climate history,” Miriam Chapman, a student activist at the university working with the pressure group Fossil Free, said before the decision. “Oxford University needs to hear the voices of its students, academics and alumni calling for action on climate change.”
Universities in the US and UK have about $393 billion invested in financial securities through their endowments, including about $10 billion linked to the fossil fuel industry, according to a 2013 study by the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at Oxford University.
The 200 institutions that have agreed to scale back on investing in polluting industries have assets of over $50 billion, according to the environmental group 350.org.
Those include non-academic institutions such as the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation and the British Medical Association.
While the direct impact of UK universities divesting from oil companies is small, divestment “is likely to lead to a change in market norms” with private sector investment funds and lending institutions shunning companies that mine fossil fuels, according to the report by Oxford’s Smith School of Enterprise and Environment.
Typically, the report said, divestment campaigns gain a foothold first in religious groups and public interest organizations, such as health organizations, before moving into universities and then the wider investing community.
“The maximum possible capital that might be divested from the fossil fuel companies represents a relatively small pool of funds,” the report said.
In deciding against divestment in October 2013, Harvard President Drew Faust said it could endanger the financial well-being of the institution and position it as a political actor rather than an academic institution. Harvard has an endowment of about $36.4 billion.
“I believe we should favor engagement over withdrawal,” Faust wrote to students at the time. “In the case of fossil fuel companies, we should think about how we might use our voice not to ostracize such companies but to encourage them to be a positive force both in meeting society’s long-term energy needs while addressing pressing environmental imperatives.”
The issue has not disappeared, though. Next month, prominent pro-divestment Harvard graduates such as actress Natalie Portman and environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. intend to stage sit-ins and other activities on campus.
The Oxford governing council includes the Vice-Chancellor Andrew Hamilton along with other representatives from the faculty and the 28 colleges associated with the organization.
The council is the trustee of funds managed by Oxford University Endowment Management Ltd., a subsidiary body of the school.
Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Europe’s largest oil company, spent about 6 million pounds on a geoscience laboratory at Oxford that opened last year. The unit “is dedicated to advanced subsurface geological analysis” which could help identify and extract possible oil deposits, according to its website.
Other sponsors include Chevron Corp., Total SA, ENI SpA and Brazil’s state-owned oil giant Petroleo Brasileiro SA, known as Petrobras.
A spokesman for Shell last week declined to comment on Oxford’s decision and pointed to a letter Chief Executive Officer Ben Van Beurden wrote in the Financial Times in December highlighting Shell’s efforts to fight climate change.
“We recognize, of course, that an energy transition is under way — and fully intend to play our part in it,” Van Beurden wrote. “More than half of our global production is cleaner-burning natural gas and we are helping to pioneer carbon capture and storage, in many people’s eyes a potentially game-changing technology.”
BP supports several college and university-wide societies at Oxford, typically in return for the clubs advertising internship and graduate recruitment opportunities to student members.
Last month the university’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender or Questioning Society decided not to ask London-based BP Plc to renew its sponsorship.
The involvement of oil companies at U.K. universities has stepped up since 2010, when Prime Minister David Cameron’s government began cutting the budget for higher education.
BP has funded a 60 million-pound energy research center based at Manchester University in northern England.
Universities including Cambridge and Heriot-Watt in Edinburgh, Scotland, have embarked on similar projects to collaborate with industry.
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