BP Amoco will give $15 million, Ford Motor Co. $5 million to fund Carbon Mitigation Initiative
By: Jeff Milgram
NEW YORK – Princeton University will receive $20 million in grants to develop ways to keep carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels from contributing to global warming.
Energy giant BP Amoco will contribute $15 million and the Ford Motor Co. $5 million over the next 10 years to fund a project called the Carbon Mitigation Initiative.
It is the largest corporate grant in Princeton’s history, surpassing the $9.8 million contributed in 1993 by Bristol-Myers Squibb to support the university’s molecular biology program, said Mary Baum, the university’s director of corporate and foundation relations.
The goal of the project is to develop and evaluate ways to keep carbon emissions, the main contributor to the greenhouse warming effect, out of the atmosphere by storing them safely within underground formations.
The grant, which was announced at a press conference Wednesday at BP’s New York office, will fund research in three important areas:
* capturing carbon before and after use to achieve sharp reductions in the amount released into the atmosphere;
* determining where to put the carbon after it has been captured; and
* understanding how carbon interacts with the environment over a wide time range – as much as 1,000 years.
The research will fall under the auspices of the Princeton Environmental Institute and will span work in geosciences, environmental science, geology, ecology, atmospheric and ocean science, chemistry and civil, mechanical and chemical engineering.
"I was sure that during my professional life that this was a problem that my children would have to deal with," said ecology Professor Stephen W. Pacala, co-principal investigator for the project.
Ironically, the announcement was made on the same day that a study by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said that if greenhouse emissions from carbon-based fuels are not curtailed, the earth’s average surface temperatures could be expected to increase substantially more than previously estimated.
"The greenhouse problem is one of the most important environmental and social issues confronting the world for the next half century or more," said Robert H. Socolow, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Princeton, the other co-principal investigator for the project and an expert on carbon sequestration.
"This is a major step for us," Princeton University President Harold T. Shapiro said at the press conference. "It will change things for our campus. It will change things for our students. It will change things for the world.
"To the extent that human activities are driving changes in the global climate, we are faced with an awesome responsibility," President Shapiro said. "We must not only develop a thorough understanding of these changes but take bold action to assure a safe and healthy environment for generations to come."
"We are showing our commitment to the environment by our commitment to research," said Sir John Browne, group chief executive of BP Amoco. "The company will be on the cutting edge in research. Princeton falls into the cutting edge. We will have a cleaner environment and a stronger economy."
According to a company spokesman, BP believes carbon mitigation is the bridge between fossil fuels and the use of renewable sources of energy.
The $20 billion represents a "serious commitment" by the two corporations to find a solution to global warming, Professor Pacala said.
One of the key elements of the project will be to figure ways to switch to alternative, hydrogen fuels, which would be created by separating fossil fuels into hydrogen and carbon.
The hydrogen would be used as fuel and the carbon, in the form of carbon dioxide, would be placed in underground reservoirs, if it is found to be safe.
"The particular focus of the work is to make sure the solution does not bring with it other large environmental problems," said Dr. Pacala.
If Princeton University scientists find ways to economically produce commercial amounts of hydrogen from fossil fuels, the technology exists to use them in a new generation of automobiles, said Marty Zimmerman, Ford’s vice president for governmental affairs.
The big question is: Will it work?
"The dedication and depth of knowledge of the people at Princeton make us optimistic that a solution can be found," Dr. Pacala said. "We don’t know if it can be done in 10 years … There is fundamental science to do … But we see a chance that we can make serious headway in a decade’s time."

