The banners were ready, the slogans too. But this January 26, at Sciences Po Strasbourg, banners or slogans, there was no need. The conference of the marketing director of TotalEnergies, Thierry Pflimlin, on the geopolitics of energy was canceled a few hours before the scheduled time. “The conditions for conducting a calm debate on this crucial topic of energy were not met”, justified Jean-Philippe Heurtin, the director of the school. Earlier, a petition written on the initiative of the student association Alter bureau warned: “We students aware of the climate emergency refuse that a platform be offered to a company responsible for a large part of the world’s carbon emissions, guilty of destruction “.
Within the Strasbourg campus, the incident was not unforeseeable. In recent years, higher education has lived to the rhythm of more or less resounding controversies denouncing the links between the oil sector and often prestigious establishments. The most striking example took place on the campus of the Ecole polytechnique, in Saclay, where TotalEnergies aimed to set up a research center. Opposition from students, mobilization relayed by associations including Greenpeace… In January, two years after the announcement, the French oil company was forced to abandon its project.
In 2020, the controversies even won over the University of Paris Sciences and Letters, a university behemoth bringing together the best of French education: Ecole Normale Supérieure, Mines Paris Tech, Dauphine University… At PSL, the management created in 2020, thanks to a financial partnership with BNP Paribas, a license dedicated to the ecological transition called “Sciences for a sustainable world”. An initiative denounced by a student association as an operation to “clean up” the image of the bank, which very largely finances oil projects.
Research, teaching and private interests
“We see that students are much more ‘aware’ than their management, and are pushing for more distance from the fossil fuel sector,” observes Edina Ifticene, fossil fuel campaigner at Greenpeace. It’s been a few years since the “climate generation” arrived at the university. In 2018, a “Manifesto for an ecological awakening” had even been written by students, signed by more than 30,000 people, calling for “placing the ecological transition at the heart of our social project”. A fundamental movement where the aspirations of students come up against the model of universities that are increasingly oriented towards the business world.
Over the past twenty years, thanks to the evolution of the university financing model, the private sector and that of higher education and research have become particularly close. “There is a movement that has taken place since the end of the 2000s to find money from companies, which has opened up a new world to private sponsorship without laying down rules of transparency”, regrets Matthieu Lequesne , the spokesperson for the collective “Polytechnique is not for sale”. Within the “X”, TotalEnergies is also well represented. Research chairs, the presence of the CEO, Patrick Pouyanné, on the school’s board of directors, and sponsorship agreements… The links are diverse, but also bear witness to a fruitful rapprochement between two key players in the transition. “Total is a partner that allows us to carry out fundamental research on carbon capture or energy efficiency, and it is very important for us to finance these projects”, justifies Benoît Deveaud, Deputy Director of Research and teaching within the school, which also has 55 other research chairs.
The Polytechnique example also bears witness to this complex relationship where research, teaching and private interests are intertwined. A situation which today pushes the directors of establishments to wonder: up to what point to establish partnerships with the fossil fuel sector? “It’s a difficult question and the answer is not necessarily the same in a university or an engineering school”, concedes Luc Abbadie, professor emeritus of ecology at Sorbonne University and co-author of the Jouzel report on the teaching of the ecological transition in higher education. He adds: “You have to go convince and for that work with everyone, but there is, at a certain point, the risk of consolidating the system in an unsuitable state.”
TotalEnergies, the foil
Within the National Institute of Applied Sciences (Insa), Bertrand Raquet, the president of this group of engineering schools, and director of Insa Toulouse, tries to illustrate this dilemma: “I have no remember having been confronted with a clear situation of deadlock between some of our industrial partners and students, perhaps because we are not in direct contact with the most polluting companies… And to put it another way, we have no no particular collaboration with TotalEnergies.” He remembers the first youth marches for the climate: “It was in March 2020 and we had more than 25% strikers on the Toulouse campus”. Today, he admits that it would be “complicated” to establish relations with Total for the training of engineering students, even if not all of them “desert”. “I don’t see whole sectors that are said to be traditionally polluting which are emptying themselves of graduates”, assures the director.
For the moment, TotalEnergies says it does not perceive this problem either in its recruitment campaigns. But until when ? In October, in a column published on the website of Echoesmore than 800 students and graduates of major schools, including l’X and AgroParisTech, proclaimed: “We, young graduates, will not work for TotalEnergies if they continue to launch giant pipelines”.
Often denounced by student groups, the ability to influence TotalEnergies and private interests on teaching and research is struggling to demonstrate itself in a striking way, underline teachers and students. “At no time does the question arise of who the private partners of Paris Sciences et Lettres are, I have no connection with them, and they have no connection in my work”, assures Anne-Sophie Robilliard, director of the Economics and social sciences course within the Science for a Sustainable World license. It is less this invisible hand of the oil sector which weighs on the university than the image of an industry belonging more and more to the past. Denounced, TotalEnergies concentrates grievances, and now acts as a foil. “You would have to be a little masochistic to seek a partnership with TotalEnergies given its brand image,” says an academic manager. With the most prestigious schools having a dual problem: “When TotalEnergies joins forces with Polytechnique, that means that research work can be signed by mentioning the Ecole polytechnique, which gives it very significant scientific credit; Conversely, it brings discredit to Polytechnique’s image,” said Matthieu Lequesne.
No student pressure
Far from Strasbourg, at Sciences Po Paris, the lines seem to move discreetly. In January, the school did not renew, “by mutual agreement”, the partnership it had maintained for nearly twenty years with the oil group and which made it possible to finance scholarships supporting equal opportunities. “There is nothing brutal or forced about that”, justifies today Nathalie Jacquet, the director of strategy and development of Sciences Po, who dismisses any desire to set herself up as “judge or censor of the action of its financial partners”. A way of saying that this decision was not made under pressure from the students.
Faced with this question, the company ensures “to hear the worries and concerns of some of the younger generations”. And believes that the best way to respond seriously is to act and invest on a daily basis to “accelerate the energy transition”. This raises another question: that of the confidence placed in fossil companies on the reality of their energy transition.