Imperial Zero Index (IZI) 2025

IMPERIAL ZERO INDEX 2025: ENGAGEMENT FOR CHANGE

Imperial’s founding mission is ‘to be useful’. This sentiment is reflected throughout our Science for Humanity strategy, our Sustainable Imperial objectives, and our engagement with industry. Along with our commitment to deliver research that supports the energy transition, and our own commitment to sustainable practices, we also reflect on our partners in research and education. Our stated position for our partnership across Imperial's activities is one of ‘Engagement for Change’.

As laid out in the Maitland Review of Imperial’s relationship with Fossil Fuel Companies (FFC) (report of the Socially Responsible Investment and Engagement Working Group), Imperial engages with a range of companies across research and education, with a long history of collaboration, and we recognise that the fossil fuel industry will play a critical role in enabling global decarbonisation. FFCs have both the expertise and resources that are going to be required to drive true change at scale, and Imperial can contribute most effectively to this by engaging with the sector to facilitate, challenge, and accelerate change. We have the expertise—in Science and Engineering, Business, and Management—to make a vital contribution.

Positive collaboration can accelerate the research, development, and rollout of technological solutions to common problems we all share, raising the lifecycle sustainability of operations and products, which will remain in use for decades to come as the world transitions to low-carbon energy and chemical feedstocks. Equally, collaboration can positively impact corporate cultures, establishing climate transition as a high priority now and in the longer-term future.

Our Engagement for Change position with FFCs has two components: i) we will only work on programmes related to a sustainable energy transition, leveraging our research and education to support FFCs as they seek to revise their businesses, and ii) we will only work with companies who demonstrate a commitment to that transition. From the outset, with all our FFC partners, whether current or prospective, we clearly outline our expectations regarding transitional performance, and the themes of research that we will conduct together. All research and education projects must be aligned with the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement; funding aimed at extending existing hydrocarbon extraction practices is not permitted. A common vision of reaching net zero by 2050 for 100% Scope 1 & 2 emissions, now considered our gateway metric for collaboration, must be shared.

In order to assess which companies have a strategic commitment to decarbonisation, and are taking concrete steps towards operationalising that commitment, we developed a rigorous methodology—the Imperial Zero Index (IZI). In this framework, a company's performance is analysed against a series of metrics. IZI enables us to form an objective picture of a company's performance in this area and to make decisions about whether we will continue to partner with that organisation.

Imperial Zero Index 2025 Outcomes

In future, Imperial will work only with companies that meet our criteria as measured by the IZI, and then only on projects which support the transition. At the current time, we have determined that the following existing partners meet our criteria for continued academic engagement:

• bp
• Equinor
• ExxonMobil
• Petronas
• Shell
• TotalEnergies
• Woodside Energy