As members of the Irving Institute for Energy and Society and the wider Dartmouth community, we are concerned about Irving Oil Ltd.’s lack of serious action to reduce its sizeable greenhouse gas emissions.
Irving Oil is a fossil fuel company. Its business is to sell fuels that cause global warming and threaten human well-being and ecological integrity worldwide, both now and in the future. Fossil fuels must be phased out and replaced with other energy sources as soon as possible in order to avert the worst effects of the looming climate crisis.
We are concerned that Irving Oil’s current climate plans are insufficient to meet this challenge. We are also concerned about the company’s history of making and publicizing climate pledges but not following through.
In 2005, Irving committed to reducing carbon emissions from its operations by 17% by 2020. It abandoned this pledge in 2019, setting a new goal of a 30% reduction by 2030. However, according to its 2022 sustainability report, the company’s emissions subsequently rose 3.1% between 2019 and 2021. This increase demonstrates that Irving is not on track to meet its own climate commitments and, worse yet, is headed in the wrong direction.
Irving claims to be investing in emissions-reducing technologies, but the steps it has taken do not add up to progress. Its 2023 deal with the Renewable Natural Gas company GrowTEC — to purchase carbon-neutral biogas made from organic waste — is marginal, representing only around 1% of Irving’s fossil gas output. Its cogeneration program, which outputs both heat and electricity, is also too small to reduce emissions meaningfully. Irving Oil will not meet its climate commitments with small and symbolic gestures.
Additionally, Irving’s baby steps only target emissions from its own operations. The vast majority of fossil fuel emissions come from burning them, not producing them. So, beyond 2030, Irving’s business is only compatible with long-term human welfare if it ceases to be a fossil fuel company altogether and transitions to renewables. Energy scientists agree that solar and wind are the best bets for scalable clean energy, but Irving is not investing in that clean power future.
In short, Irving Oil Ltd. is a climate laggard, not a climate leader. We make this assessment based on our expertise as students, staff and climate, environmental and energy scholars. Many of us are based at or affiliated with the Irving Institute for Energy and Society at Dartmouth, which is funded by fossil fuel profits via the Arthur L. Irving Family Foundation and Irving Oil.
The natural dividend of Irving’s generosity to Dartmouth is accountability. As experts in the climate crisis and what it takes to avoid further disaster, we know that the following commitments are required for Irving Oil Ltd. to actually live up to its ambitions of climate leadership:
- Reaffirm the 30% by 2030 goal as one that Irving Oil will meet.
- Report complete emissions accounts, including scope 1-3 emissions, for all operations on an ongoing annual basis.
- Commit to an annual process to revise emissions reduction plans sufficiently to meet climate goals.
- Commit to investing in renewable energy systems based on wind and solar at a scale sufficient to reach mitigation targets in the near term, and to displace fossil fuels in the long term.
- Commit to a plan to end fossil fuel production and transformation by 2050 and transition to a non-fossil energy company.
Without clear progress on these points within a few years, the time will have passed for Irving to step up as a climate leader. Instead, it will have willfully pushed the climate system into dangerous territory in the pursuit of profits. We hope Irving Oil will quickly step up to this challenge and reap the brain trust it has invested in at Dartmouth.
Otherwise, Irving will commit to posterity its role as a bad actor in the climate crisis. If that comes to pass, the Irving name should have no rightful place on our campus.
With urgency,
Corey Lesk, Geography
Xander Dalke, ’27
Chiara Kimelia ’28
Sarah Cuprewich, EEES
Ella Grim ’25
Ellie Appelgren, ’28
Sam Roth Gordon ’25
Caitlin Hicks Pries, Biological Sciences
Lorenza Viola, Physics and Astronomy
Connor Schafer, ’25
Rowan Magee, ’28
Charis Boke, Anthropology
Maron Greenleaf, Anthropology
Petra McGillen, German Studies
Henry Dorr, ’28
Maya Beauvineau, ’26
Manu Gupta ’27
Kamalaprasad Vijayakumari Amrutha, EEES
Dyah Puspitaloka, EEES
Christopher Callahan, PhD ’23
Mathieu Morlighem, Earth Sciences
Felipe Fernandes Mendonça, ’27
Susanne Freidberg, Geography
David Hsueh, ’28
Maeve Ingelfinger, ’28
Phoebe Oehmig, EEES
Leah Cho-Carrier, ’27
Jules Reed, Geography
Ben Stevenson, ’27
Nicholas Lutzky ’28
Jörg Matschullat, Irving Institute
Roan Wade, ’26
Chloe Cordasco ’24
Kate Yeo ’25
Aina Nadeem, ’27
Dayanara Martinez, ’28
Joseph Savage, EEES
Jim Heller, ’28
Sophie von Fromm, Biology
Jane Henderson, Geography
Lillia Hammond, ’26
Sean Wallace, ’27
Noe Kemper, Chemistry
Ridhi Chandarana Rajesh, EEES
Smitakshi Goswami, Physics
Angela Zhang, ’28
Matthew Timofeev, ’25
Margaret O'Shea, EEES
Alex Gottlieb, Geography
Kevin Engel, ’27
Angela Shang, ’27
Flora Perlmutter, Geography
Jordan Narrol, ’25
Ahlam Abuawad, Epidemiology
Luca Buccilli, ’27
Justin Mankin, Geography
Matt Ayres, Biological Sciences
Annabelle Niblett, ’26
Evzen Selvon, ’28
Bethany Moreton, History
Montserrat Perez Castro, Geography
Milanne Berg, ’24
Letters to the editor represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
