Biofuels Deal Comes Under Fire at California University

Three months after signing a $500-billion research contract with the petroleum company BP, the University of California at Berkeley faces organized opposition to the deal, reports the Los Angeles Times.

BP, Berkeley, and a third partner, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, agreed in January to establish an institute to develop alternative energy sources and reduce global warming — eventually. In the short term, the institute, which will house dozens of scientists, will develop plant fuel sources and try to perfect the extraction of oil from existing wells.

Critics — who have referred mockingly to “UCBP” — worry that those short-term goals will skew research and that BP will have undue influence over the university. Seventeen faculty members asked the Faculty Senate to demand more university control over the money.

But a majority of Berkeley Senate members said that enough safeguards existed and that they worried that demands on the institute could cause BP to withdraw one of the largest university grants in history.

Read The Chronicle of Higher Education’s coverage of the BP deal and recent controversy over its proposed terms.