Info about the sponsors

Companies like BP and Equinor continue to extract new oil and gas and drive us further into climate disaster and biodiversity loss while trashing human rights. Yet their names are plastered across our Museum - with museum bosses claiming they are ‘part of the solution‘ to the climate crisis.

The Science Museum has just opened a new climate gallery – paid for by Adani: coal-producer, weapons manufacturer, and human rights abuser.

Adani is the world’s biggest private producer of coal, and has a joint venture with weapons producer Elbit Systems, producing drones that are being used in the genocide of the Palestinian people.

This Spring, the Science Museum wants to launch Adani’s new gallery quietly, without any fuss, having dismissed protests about it for years; we won’t let that happen.

Our museum is not for sale to fossil fuel companies or weapons producers. It is time we reclaimed it as a place for learning, for culture, and for future generations.

Complicity in the genocide in Gaza

Two Science Museum sponsors, BP and Adani, have links to the genocide in Gaza.

ADANI

Adani operates a joint venture with Israeli weapons producer Elbit Systems. Together they are producing the Hermes 900 drone which is being used in the genocide in Palestine.

This February, workers in India’s ports, where Adani-Elbit weapons are shipped from, refused to load Adani’s weapons onto the cargo ships, in solidarity with Palestine

Adani also has a joint venture with Israel Weapon Industries (IWI), developing and manufacturing assault and sniper rifles and machine guns.

In January 2023, Israel privatised and sold the Haifa port to the Adani Group (70%) and Israel's Gadot Group (30%), providing ~US$1.6 billion to the state of Israel.

One month into the assault on Gaza, Israel granted gas licences off the coast of Gaza to 6 companies including BP. This licence is only possible because of Israel’s occupation of Gaza. BP has also been seeking to acquire 50% of the Israeli Delek Group-owned NewMed, who have also been granted a licence.

Adani: coal and human rights abuses

In March 2024 Energy Revolution: The Adani Green Energy Gallery is set to open at the Science Museum.

The decision to name a gallery after Adani has drawn widespread criticism and protest, not only in light of Adani’s role in coal production, but also its human rights abuses.

To make way for Adani’s coal mines, coal-fired power stations, ports and green technology, Indigenous and rural communities in India have been harrassed, injured and killed. In particular the ancient Hasdeo forest which is home to Indigenous Adivasi people, has become a site of resistance against Adani’s coal expansion. Meanwhile, Wangan-Jagalingou Traditional Owners in Queensland Australia have contested the decision to give away sacred sites for Adani to develop the biggest coalmine in Australia’s history.

Workers have been subject to inhumane conditions and died in the construction of the Godda coal-fired power plant in Jharkhand state in eastern India.

Adani Group’s green projects in India are also implicated in environmental degradation and livelihood insecurity among people dispossessed of their agricultural lands for the group’s massive solar parks.

Adani has been implicated in the Rohingya genocide. In 2017, The Adani Group signed a commercial deal with the Myanmar Economic Corporation (controlled by the Myanmar Armed Forces) to develop a port. The deal was criticised as helping to fund crimes against humanity and enriching those behind the persecution of the Rohingya.

Critics in India accuse Adani of participating in government cronyism and corruption (coal auctions as example), and of having undue influence with and political patronage from the far-right populist BJP regime under President Modi.

All of this information was held by the museum at the time the sponsorship deal was made.

Equinor and Rosebank

The Science Museum's interactive gallery for children is sponsored by oil giant Equinor.

The Science Museum’s ‘Wonderlab’, a gallery for children, is sponsored by Equinor, the company behind the contested Rosebank oilfield development, which was given the green light by the government in 2022.

The International Energy Agency has warned there can be no new investment in oil, gas, or coal if the world is to meet the 1.5°C target of the Paris Agreement. New developments like Rosebank lock us even further into an expensive, climate-wrecking energy system.

If it goes ahead it will generate 200m+ tonnes of CO2, more than the annual emissions of all 28 low-income countries, paid for by the UK taxpayer.

The Science Museum has a longstanding partnership with Equinor and their name appears above the Wonderlab gallery and on all the gallery branding.