Princeton has cut ties with 90 fossil fuel companies. Fossil Free Penn says there’s more to do.

Princeton University’s board of trustees last month announced it would take steps to “dissociate” from 90 companies related to the fossil fuel industry, 10 with which the university has current or recent financial involvement.

A faculty panel helped to identify the 90 companies, which Princeton said are active in the thermal coal or tar sands areas of the fossil fuel industry. Thermal coal and tar or oil sands are used in power production, and the extraction, transportation, and burning of those fossil fuels is often cited as factors in climate change. Among the companies are Exxon Mobile Corp., China Energy Investment Corp., and Peabody Energy Corp.

Fossil fuel divestment has been a hot issue on college campuses for more than a decade, with groups of students and faculty concerned about the environment pushing for their schools to get out of the investments, with some success.

Princeton said it also would sell off from its endowment any investments in publicly traded fossil fuel companies and aim to eventually have an endowment with “net zero” carbon emissions. Just exactly how an endowment achieves that status or how to measure it is something Princeton is still figuring out.

The move came as the University of Pennsylvania continues to face pressure from a student group to take further steps to divest from fossil fuel companies. It’s one of the reasons students set up an encampment on Penn’s campus five weeks ago, following another encampment it staged last spring.

» READ MORE: Penn students are camping out on the campus green to get their environmental demands met

Fossil Free Penn lauded Princeton’s steps in a statement, noting that it particularly liked that the university wasn’t just divesting but dissociating — which more broadly includes any sort of financial arrangement, including research funding — from the companies. But, the group said, Princeton should have included more companies on its list, such as BP, Chevron, and Shell.

“While this is a commendable step in the right direction, one which FFP hopes Penn will follow, it is not full divestment,” the group said. “Princeton and Penn both have more work to do.”

The group said Penn should “publicly pledge to divest the endowment from all indirect and direct fossil-fuel related assets in all types of funds by 2025″ as well as “cut all ties with the fossil fuel industry, its financiers, and its upholders. This includes disqualifying individuals who hold positions in fossil fuel corporations or financiers from holding trustee or administrative positions at Penn, refusing all research funding and donations from the fossil fuel industry, and banning oil and gas companies from on-campus recruiting and career fairs.”

Penn in a statement emphasized that it has taken multiple steps in recent years to address concerns. Last year, it announced its goal of reducing net greenhouse gas emissions from its endowment investments to zero by 2050, which it said in the statement that it is working toward.

» READ MORE: Rutgers board votes to divest its financial portfolio of fossil fuels

Penn also said it would refrain from making any new commitments in “private equity vehicles dedicated to investments in fossil fuel production.” It also said it would continue to refrain from making direct investments in companies involved in the production of fossil fuels.

In 2020, the school announced that it did not directly hold investments in companies focused on producing thermal coal or bituminous (tar) sands and that it would not do so in the future. And trustees also said that the school would “thoughtfully incorporate climate change in investment decision-making.”

“Taken together with Penn’s educational, research and operational initiatives, these investment decisions are significant and major steps that will reduce Penn’s carbon footprint and lessen the impact of climate change on society,” university spokesperson Ron Ozio said.

Princeton’s announcement came after a two-year process with the school ultimately aiming to focus on the “most-polluting segments of the industry.” It also cited concerns about “corporate disinformation campaigns,” but said the bar to measure that is “exceedingly high, especially in the absence of quantitative standards” and that it wasn’t prepared to include those potential companies on the list, but might do so in the future.

The school also pledged to establish a new fund to support energy research that would offset the loss of the money that the school previously accepted from companies now on the list.

“Princeton will have the most significant impact on the climate crisis through the scholarship we generate and the people we educate,” Princeton President Christopher L. Eisgruber said in a statement. “The creation of this new fund is one of several ways that the university is helping to provide Princeton researchers with the resources they need to pursue this work.”