Gas fires light the sky at a Saudi Aramco plant in Ras Tanura.
Guardian investigation reveals fossil fuel links of IPCC authors, with experts declaring the body’s conflict of interest policy ‘not fit for purpose’ On her first day as an expert author on the world’s most important climate reports, Prof Julia Steinberger knew nobody else, so she sat down at a stranger’s table for breakfast.
“Hi, I’m Julia.
I’m from the University of Lausanne,” she said.
The man across the table replied: “I’m Mustafa Babiker.
I work with Saudi Aramco.” Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s state oil company, is responsible for more of the carbon emissions driving the escalating climate crisis than any other company in history, and the kingdom has long been a major blocker of climate action.
Wasn’t that a conflict of interest, Steinberger asked.
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), on which they both now sat, produces the reports that underpin UN climate negotiations and inform national climate policy around the world.
No, Steinberger recalls Babiker saying: he had declared the relationship on the IPCC’s conflict of interest form.
“That didn’t seem to me a very good answer, but he was friendly and we had a very nice breakfast.” Dr Babiker has worked for Aramco for 20 years.
His appointment as a coordinating lead author for the IPCC’s coming Seventh Assessment Report sparked controversy in the climate science community last year.
But a Guardian investigation, carried out in partnership with a team of international journalists, has now revealed that Babiker is far from an isolated case.
At least a dozen IPCC lead authors are employed by or linked to Saudi Aramco, Saudi institutions and other oil and gas interests, the investigation found.
One IPCC vice-chair, part of the body’s leadership group, also represents the kingdom at global climate negotiations as a government employee.
Saudi Aramco’s Ras Tanura oil refinery and oil terminal.
They are produced by hundreds of lead authors from around the world with expertise ranging from atmospheric physics to the impacts of extreme weather.
The Guardian examined the 223 lead authors in working group III, the part of the IPCC that assesses how emissions can be reduced or removed from the atmosphere.
Its work evaluates emissions-cutting policies and technologies and so is directly relevant to the economic interests of countries and companies.
Working groups I and II cover the science of climate change and its impacts.
The investigation identified 20 cases with strong conflict of interest concerns.
More than half involved authors linked to Saudi institutions, a concentration that raises broader questions about the kingdom’s influence on how the reports are produced.
The IPCC’s conflict of interest policy has been described as “not fit for purpose” by experts who have reviewed the Guardian’s investigation.
‘It’s the first time we have so many Saudi-linked authors’ Another Aramco employee selected as an IPCC lead author is Dr Diego Armando Moya Pinta, who has worked as an energy and sustainability scientist at the company since 2022.
The IPCC lists his affiliation only as Imperial College London, where he is an honorary senior research fellow.
As one of 14 lead authors for the chapter on energy systems, Moya Pinta will assess options for reducing emissions across the energy sector, an area with direct implications for Aramco’s business.
“I don’t think there would be any question that a case like this would fit under the IPCC’s conflict of interest policy,” said Prof Kevin Elliott, an academic at Michigan State University specialising in research ethics.
Yet in March 2026, the IPCC’s conflict of interest committee reported finding no conflicts of interest among any of the authors selected for the Seventh Assessment Report, the next edition of its biggest and most influential publication.
The disconnect between the committee’s conclusion and the presence of authors from the world’s largest petroleum company “raises questions about whether the IPCC conflict of interest policy is fit for purpose or being properly applied”, said Rachel Kennerley, a senior campaigner at the Center for International Environmental Law.
Alongside the two Aramco employees, working group III includes five authors from the King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center (KAPSARC), a Saudi government-funded thinktank chaired by the country’s energy minister and whose stated mission is to “advance Saudi Arabia’s energy sector”.
Saudi Arabia’s energy minister, Abdulaziz bin Salman Al Saud, speaking at the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh in 2024.
Another energy systems lead author, Prof Zain Yamani, at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, was conducting joint research with Aramco’s New Energies Research Division during the past year while also serving in his IPCC role.
The resulting paper, co-authored with two Aramco scientists, was published in July.
A further IPCC lead author, Dr Syed Masiur Rahman, works at the same university, which advertises its proximity to Saudi Aramco as offering “countless opportunities for collaboration and innovation” between the organisations.
A lead author on the chapter on carbon dioxide removal technologies, Prof Hussein Hoteit at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, was finalising research based on a demonstration project for underground carbon storage at the time of his appointment to the IPCC.
Saudi Aramco conceived the project and provided substantial financial support.
“It’s the first time we have so many Saudi-linked authors in the IPCC, above all in working group III,” says Dr Kari De Pryck, a political scientist at the University of Geneva, who is an expert in the organisation’s governance.
De Pryck sees the growing presence of Saudi-linked authors in the context of a broader shift in the kingdom’s climate diplomacy.
Its longstanding opposition to cutting fossil fuel burning in UN climate negotiations is increasingly complemented by the promotion of technological climate solutions.
“When it comes to the IPCC, the Saudi strategy now focuses on advocating technologies like carbon capture that would limit the impact on its fossil fuel economy,” says De Pryck.
Saudi Aramco’s Manifa oilfield.
Dr Malak Al-Nory, one of working group III’s seven vice-chairs, is a senior adviser to the Saudi energy ministry.
Vice-chairs help oversee the assessment process and guide its scientific and technical work.
They also evaluate authors’ conflict of interest disclosures and can refer cases to the IPCC’s conflict of interest committee.
The IPCC does not preclude government-employed scientists working on its reports.
Unusually however, Al-Nory has continued to represent Saudi Arabia in UN climate negotiations while serving as a vice-chair.
She was part of the kingdom’s delegation to the Bonn Climate Change Conference in June 2026, underscoring concerns about the compatibility of her dual roles. skip past newsletter promotion after newsletter promotion “Conflict of interest rules aren’t an accusation that someone has done something wrong,” said Tzeporah Berman, chair of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty.
“They exist to protect an institution’s integrity by ensuring professional, financial or governmental interests that could reasonably be perceived to influence its work are disclosed and appropriately managed.” “If the IPCC’s conflict of interest system can look at an IPCC vice-chair working for the Saudi energy ministry, Aramco employees serving as lead authors, and this concentration of authors from Saudi state-linked institutions and find nothing that needs to be managed, then the policy is clearly not fit for purpose,” she said.
A ‘gap’ between policy and reality Until 2011, the IPCC had no institution-wide conflict of interest policy.
That changed after a bruising credibility crisis in 2010, when mistakes in its major reports and allegations of financial conflicts involving its then-chair prompted an independent review of the organisation’s procedures.
The resulting policy states that its purpose is “to protect the legitimacy, integrity, trust, and credibility of the IPCC”.
It adds: “It is essential that the work of the IPCC is not compromised by any conflict of interest for those who execute it.” Kennerley said there was a gap between the IPCC’s written criteria and how it operated in practice.
She said national representatives had raised questions over a lack of guidelines on how the policy was enforced, adding that another major problem was transparency.
Authors’ conflict of interest declarations are not made public, and the conflict of interest committee provides no detail about its deliberations.
A spokesperson for the IPCC said no authors had been referred to its conflict of interest committee as all potential conflicts of interest reported could be resolved by the working group vice-chairs.
“The strength of the IPCC lies in its commitment to diverse leadership and author teams, multiple expert and government review processes, and the inclusive nature of its assessments,” the spokesperson said.
“These safeguards collectively support the objectivity, integrity, authority and credibility of IPCC reports.” They said details of the review of conflict of interest declarations were confidential due to data protection legislation.
“The public can judge whether relevant interests have been adequately assessed and managed [by the] assessment reports themselves, which go through robust, multistage reviews which are [publicly] documented.” Regarding the high number of experts linked to Saudi Arabia, the spokesperson said: “No individual author, institution, sector or country determines the conclusions of an IPCC report.
Conclusions are developed collectively by large, internationally and scientifically diverse author teams.” They said IPCC authors were leading experts in their fields and deliberately drawn from a wide range of backgrounds, including government and the private sector.
Engineers and journalists at a Saudi Aramco plant in Hawiyah in 2021.
My research and contributions related to the IPCC work were fully funded and supported by my employer, which is acknowledged in the referenced paper.” The multi-author paper also states: “We thank Saudi Aramco for conceiving and conducting this pilot project and for providing substantial financial support.” Aramco declined to comment, and none of the other individuals or institutions responded to requests for comment.
Eleven of the 20 cases of strong potential conflicts of interest identified by the Guardian investigation were Saudi-linked, with the rest spread across other nations and linked to issues including industry collaboration, fossil-fuel sponsorship of academic institutions’ research, environmental campaigning and sustainable finance.
Dr Jeroen Oomen, a climate governance researcher at Utrecht University, said: “The IPCC’s mandate as the arbiter of climate science has always been based on its independence and neutrality.
The conflicts [reported in this investigation] risk damaging such a reputation.” Dr Adam Standring, a researcher at the Lisbon School of Economics and Management, said the IPCC was created to bridge science and politics, and it “straddles those two worlds”.
That hybrid role was fundamental to its success, he said, but also a source of problems.
Berman said: “At a time when fossil fuel interests and some governments are fighting to delay the transition away from fossil fuels, the IPCC should be fiercely protecting its independence.
That means strong disclosure requirements, meaningful conflict of interest rules and safeguards capable of addressing both actual conflicts and reasonable perceptions of conflict.” The IPCC said there was no process currently under way to amend its conflict of interest policy.
This investigation was developed with the support of Journalismfund Europe and is also being published in L’Humanité in France, Lucy sui mondi in Italy and Visão in Portugal.
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