The Science Museum has been forced to cut ties with oil giant Equinor over its sponsor’s environmental record, the Observer can reveal.
Equinor has sponsored the museum’s interactive “WonderLab” since 2016, but the relationship is now coming to close, a move that will be seen as a major victory for climate change campaigners.
The London museum said that it was severing ties with the Norwegian state-owned energy giant over its failure to lower carbon emissions sufficiently to ensure it was aligned with the Paris Climate Agreement goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C.
The sponsorship deal had been controversial because of Equinor’s role in Rosebank, the biggest undeveloped oil and gas field in the North Sea, which the government gave the go-ahead to develop last year.
The company also inserted a “gagging clause” in its original deal with the museum, which prevented staff from making comments that could be seen as “discrediting or damaging the goodwill or reputation” of Equinor.
Although the museum claimed that such clauses were reciprocal and standard in corporate partnerships, it has pledged to remove them in future.
In a statement, the Science Museum confirmed that Equinor’s sponsorship had “drawn to a close at the end of their current contract term”.
A museum spokesperson added: “The partnership concludes with our warm appreciation and with our ongoing encouragement to Equinor to continue to raise the bar in their efforts to put in place emissions reduction targets aligned with limiting global warming to 1.5°C.”
In emails disclosed under Freedom of Information legislation and shared with the Observer, Science Museum director Sir Ian Blatchford told Equinor that the company was in breach of the museum’s pledge to ensure its sponsors complied with the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement.
In other correspondence, the museum confirmed that sponsors in breach of climate commitments and unable to change course would be subject to gradual disengagement.
The move has added to pressure on the museum to cut ties with other fossil fuel sponsors, including the oil giant BP and the Indian coal-mining conglomerate Adani.
Last year the Church of England cut its fossil fuel investments after concluding no big oil and gas company was “aligned with the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement, as assessed by the Transition Pathway Initiative”.
The move is a major shift in policy by the museum, which has forcefully defended its relationships with oil and gas companies in the past. In 2019, Blatchford told the Financial Times that “even if the Science Museum were lavishly publicly funded I would still want to have sponsorship from the oil companies”.
Campaigners welcomed the decision to end the sponsorship. Chris Garrard, co-director of Culture Unstained, which has campaigned against the fossil fuel sponsorship of the Science Museum, said: “This is a seismic shift. After years of mounting pressure, the Science Museum has now adopted red lines on climate change which have led to Equinor being dropped.
“Yet rather than proudly telling the world that it took action because its sponsor was flouting climate targets backed by governments around the world, the museum continues to push the false narrative that its polluting sponsors are leading the energy transition.”
He added: “With BP also failing to align its business with Paris Agreement goals and Adani the world’s biggest private producer of coal, the museum must now hold these companies to the same standard and stop promoting their toxic brands.”
The move comes after the controversy surrounding investment manager Baillie Gifford and its ties to Israel and fossil fuel companies.
A campaign by Fossil Free Books led to Baillie Gifford ending funding for nine book festivals, including Edinburgh, Cheltenham and the Hay festival, which was the first to decline sponsorship after speakers began to boycott the event.
