After working at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette for more than 30 years, Ramesh Kolluru says Lafayette may not be where he grew up. But it’s where he grew old.
Kolluru, the school’s vice president for research, innovation and economic development, said he admires Cajuns, the French descendants who settled in southern Louisiana two centuries ago after being exiled from Acadia. He appreciates that history, which inspired the university’s athletic teams’ nickname: the Ragin’ Cajuns. “How Cajuns came to be in this part of the country. Not much was given. Not much was expected, perhaps also,” he said.
In the signature line of his emails, Kolluru includes the title “Honorary Cajun,” a designation he was given by a former Lafayette city-parish president. It’s also on his CV. “I’ve been called a lot of names but honorary Cajun is the best thing I’ve been called,” Kolluru said in an interview with The Lens.
His adopted hometown, Lafayette, is central to the state’s fossil fuel industry, he explained. “Lafayette is a hub city. A place where the oil and gas industry and energy industry have grown and been supported,” he said. The number of oil and gas jobs in the area took a hit during the COVID-19 pandemic and have not recovered. But Kolluru’s embrace of the fossil fuel industry remains steadfast.
During last year’s summer heatwave in Louisiana, Kolluru was approached by an industry lobbying group called “Committee of 100 for Economic Development, Inc.,” or C100. The request came soon after the Environmental Protection Agency had wrapped up a three-day public hearing in Baton Rouge about whether Louisiana should be given what’s known as “primacy,” or enforcement responsibility, of carbon capture and storage projects within state borders. Carbon capture and storage, or CCS, is a controversial method of reducing greenhouse gases by fitting industrial facilities with equipment that chemically extracts carbon dioxide from the pollution puffing out of smokestacks. The captured carbon is transported via pipeline and, ultimately, injected deep underground.
More than 150 people testified during the hearing about whether the state should be allowed, under the Safe Drinking Water Act, to grant permits for the wells where industry plans to inject captured carbon for storage. The testimony reflected both community concerns that the state has a poor history of protecting residents from oil and gas industry endeavors and industry’s hopes that the EPA handing over regulatory authority to the state would speed up permitting of CCS projects.
While the hearing was over, C100 wanted to continue to drum up support for Louisiana’s control of CCS.
That’s when Michael Olivier, the former head of C100, sent a request to Kolluru, according to emails viewed through a public records request. “We will be seeking influential business leaders in regions of the state to sign OpEds (see attached example) and we will use social media (below) to influence public opinion on the upcoming EPA ruling. Would you be that person in Acadiana?” Olivier asked.
“Absolutely!” Kolluru responded.
C100 did not respond to requests for comment. In a letter to the editor published by The Advocate last summer, C100 executive committee member Scott Ballard wrote that granting Louisiana regulatory authority of carbon capture “would kick our state’s oil and gas industry into overdrive.”
Among C100’s members are representatives of companies that have proposed carbon capture projects in the state — such as ExxonMobil, AirProducts and Gulf Coast Sequestration — and the presidents of UL Lafayette and Louisiana State University.
Within Kolluru’s research leadership position at UL Lafayette, he told The Lens, he’s worked with several industry lobbying groups to provide community education about carbon capture technology, including C100, Louisiana Association of Business and Industry, and the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association. Records show that C100 provided Kolluru with talking points to share on social media and in opinion pieces in newspapers, about why Louisiana should take over regulatory authority of carbon-capture projects in the state. A political consultant working with the industry lobbying group later followed up with a draft letter for Kolluru to review that would be shopped around to Lafayette area newspapers. Kolluru told The Lens he never shared talking points written by anyone else in opinion pieces, social media posts or at community meetings. He did not respond to a follow-up question about the draft letter.
After reviewing the email chain between C100 and Kolluru, Michael Mann, a climate scientist and distinguished professor at Pennsylvania State University, called the relationship between UL Lafayette and C100 “deeply problematic.”
“This is a way of purchasing moral license, by using academic institutions as a friendly-appearing facade behind which bad actors in the fossil fuel industry are able to hide as they promote greenwash and climate delay,” Mann said.
Industry’s close ties to UL Lafayette also created less-direct ways for industry talking points to find their way into Kolluru’s writings. In public records received by The Lens, Mark Zappi, the Executive Director of the Energy Institute of Louisiana, who reports to Kolluru, requested to speak with an Exxon executive for a letter that Kolluru was writing for “a broad audience.”
“We go where there is the greatest opportunity to maximize impact and that comes from working with industry,” Kolluru said of the university’s fossil fuel relationships.
For fossil fuel industry, academics can ‘enhance credibility’
The partnership between UL Lafayette and the fossil-fuel industry fits into a larger, national pattern, described in a Congressional report issued earlier this year, after a multi-year investigation into the “deception campaigns” launched by major oil companies to spread climate-change denial and disinformation. The report notes that “strategic partnerships” forged with universities by fossil-fuel firms are intended to “enhance their credibility, shape academic research programs to provide studies supportive of a prolonged life for oil and gas, leverage the resulting research to their advantage, and bolster access to policymakers.”
Industry-sponsored research can have real impact on which climate solutions universities embrace, said Melissa Finucane, the vice president of science and innovation for the Union of Concerned Scientists. A 2022 study by Columbia University researchers found that university energy centers that received fossil fuel funding were more likely to favor natural gas over renewables in their reports and social media. For centers less dependent on fossil fuels, the opposite was true – their reports favored solar and hydro power.
“If you think about it from the perspective of the fossil fuel companies, by association they get people to perceive them as being more credible,” Finucane said. “They also are building relationships with institutions that themselves have connections with other policy makers or influencers.”
In Louisiana, fossil-fuel companies’ recent investments at universities have centered around carbon capture and storage. Kolluru was among a handful of Louisiana academics who submitted written testimony or testified at the EPA’s public hearing in June 2023, about whether the state should be granted regulatory authority over carbon capture projects in its borders. Reporting by The Lens shows that many of the professors who testified at the hearings came from university departments that received funding from fossil fuel companies that have proposed carbon capture projects in the state.
“Louisiana has the extensive expertise and knowledge of its own geologic regional resources for effective governance of the (CCS) program. In fact, this regional expert-base is more knowledgeable of regional geological formations than that of outside regulators,” Kolluru wrote in his public comment. “I strongly support primacy for Louisiana which will place the economic and ecological future in our own hands – where it should be.” Kolluru’s written comment to the EPA appears to match the messaging of C100’s talking points, which also stressed the need for Louisianans to make their own decisions about industry in the state, rather than leaving it in the hands of the federal government. Kolluru did not respond to a question about what has informed his perspectives on carbon capture.
Finucane, with the Union of Concerned Scientists, said that the public benefits from questioning the motives and benefits of academic institutions that engage with industry. For example, do they have the technical expertise that’s relevant? And what evidence is there to back up their claims?
Kolluru began his career, in 1996, at UL Lafayette as a research scientist in the school’s former Apparel-Computer Integrated Manufacturing Center, which looked for ways to help automate the textile industry. In an interview with The Lens, he said he was not an expert on carbon capture technology. He views it as “a tool in the toolkit” to address carbon emissions and “an opportunity for Louisiana,” he said.
‘Worrisome stuff’
Last spring, Kolluru appeared to acknowledge the value of his role, as an academic, in making carbon capture more palatable to people who live near proposed injection sites. “Industry cannot – rather should not – do this because they are seen as biased and conflicted. University partners should be called on to help by providing science-based information to address concerns,” Kolluru wrote in an email to Bryan Hanks, an oil landman who previously served as chairman of the Louisiana Oil & Gas Association and now chairs UL Lafayette’s board of trustees.
Kolluru’s colleague at UL Lafayette, Mark Zappi, has been making the rounds at public meetings to respond to “anti-CCS and anti-petroleum efforts,” according to emails viewed through a public records request.
Zappi did not respond to requests for comment.
It’s unclear if those in Zappi’s audiences knew about his university’s relationships with industry. Last fall, he spoke at a meeting hosted by Cleco, the utility company, about its plans to retrofit a petroleum coke-burning power plant in central Louisiana with carbon capture equipment.
“When you look at this overall process, it’s utilizing technology that’s been around for a long time, so it’s proven technology,” Zappi told community members at the open forum at Northwood High School, according to KALB television. Cleco asked Zappi to speak at the meeting, Kolluru said.
Jackson Voss, the climate policy coordinator for the Alliance for Affordable Energy, disagreed with Zappi’s assertion that carbon capture technology is “proven.” When asked to name carbon-capture successes, advocates have little to cite, Voss noted. “There has not really been any public demonstration of the success of carbon capture so far in terms of permanent storage of carbon dioxide and other pollutants,” he said. “There have been some really expensive failures.”
In 2021, a carbon dioxide pipeline ruptured in Satartia, Mississippi, sending 45 people to the hospital. The carbon dioxide displaced oxygen in the air, causing car engines to turn off and leading people to become confused.
Because of what happened in Sataria, Voss believes that the CCS industry’s approaches to UL Lafayette, as detailed by The Lens, are “worrisome stuff,” he replied in an email. In April, another CO2 pipeline owned by ExxonMobil ruptured in Louisiana, leaking 2,548 barrels of carbon dioxide.
“Of course, it’s not new for universities to be tied to industry monetarily and otherwise,” Voss wrote. “(But), it is certainly very concerning how closely Louisiana universities seem to be coordinating with oil and gas corporations around CCS in particular, especially given your previous reporting on how these relationships have been allowed to shape university research to present a more favorable picture of industry than is probably merited.”
Industry and university work together on carbon-capture messaging
On the first day of the EPA’s hearing in Louisiana, ExxonMobil donated $500,000 to the UL Lafayette’s energy institute and public policy center for “outreach efforts,” according to a university news release.
As Exxon’s gift to UL Lafayette was being finalized, Zappi made clear that he hoped Exxon would get something out of the arrangement. “We also want these gifts to be areas of great pride and benefit to ExxonMobil,” Zappi wrote in an email to Brandon Maxwell, from ExxonMobil’s public and governmental affairs office. “We want to make these gifts a good experience for your great company.”
Internal emails viewed through a public records request by The Lens show that Exxon’s gift to UL Lafayette would help pay for two positions, both for a three-year span: an “energy justice outreach coordinator” in the Kathleen Babineaux Blanco Public Policy Center and an outreach coordinator for the Energy Institute of Louisiana. Exxon directed further questions about the donation to the university.
The university hasn’t tapped into the Exxon funds yet, Kolluru said, though his office is currently paying for university staff to speak to communities about carbon-capture technology. Even after the university begins to use Exxon’s funds to pay outreach coordinators’ salaries, Exxon will not shape outreach conversations with community members, he told The Lens. “The fact that (the outreach team is) funded by Exxon does not mean it’s going into a community to talk about Exxon’s efforts or Shell’s efforts.”
Emails show that Zappi regularly updated Maxwell, with Exxon, about his carbon capture speaking engagements, even asking Maxwell to help him formulate a response to concerns that carbon captured from industrial sources could contain other pollutants. For his part, Maxwell provided Zappi with information to combat “myths” about carbon capture technology.
As Maxwell wrote to Zappi last summer: “Myth: CO2 pipelines are dangerous. But they actually enjoy a top-notch safety performance record despite one or two non-fatal events over the course of decades.” Maxwell wrote.
“Many thanks – this is very helpful,” Zappi replied.
Last spring, as Zappi spoke to legislators and other community leaders on behalf of the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry, he referenced Exxon’s carbon capture project in LaBarge, Wyoming — the largest existing carbon capture project in the world.
In a message with Maxwell, Zappi described LaBarge as a “great story and success.”
Between 1986 and 2020, the treating facility captured about 47% of carbon emissions. But it was captured, not as a climate solution – according to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) – but to be used by oil producers to push more fossil fuels out of the ground.
Only 3% of the carbon emissions were captured and stored.
The other half of the CO2 emitted at LaBarge was vented back into the atmosphere, according to IEEFA.
Zappi emailed Maxwell after his presentation. “Note the info I presented on LaBarge – y’all came off being the experts,” he wrote. “The Shell folks commented on the nice PR I gave you all.”
This story is part of the “Captured Audience” series, which is supported by a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism sponsored by The Lens, a nonprofit newsroom in New Orleans.
