A student environmental group is accusing a Columbia University think tank of hiding the extent of its fossil fuel financial ties.
The complaint, filed Monday to New York City’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, calls out Columbia’s Center on Global Energy Policy for alleged deceptive trade practices. The effort was led by Columbia’s chapter of the Sunrise Movement, a student environmental justice group whose members accused the think tank of misleading the public over funding from big names in the fossil fuel industry, according to a news release.
CGEP describes itself as an unbiased, international climate and energy research hub. It discloses its oil company contributors on its website.
“Columbia appears to be engaging in extensive deception over its climate research,” wrote Leel Dias, an environmental science junior at Columbia who helped write the complaint, in the release. “This situation has all the telltale signs of academic corruption.”
