Greentown Labs, located in Somerville, recently announced that it will be partnering with Aramco Americas, a subsidiary of big oil company Aramco.

By Molly Rains

Greentown Labs, a climate-minded startup incubator based here in Somerville, last month revealed the identity of its newest partner: Aramco Americas, a subsidiary of the global oil giant Aramco.

Greentown, which describes itself as a “community of climate action pioneers,” has worked with fuel companies before, with companies Shell, BP and Chevron already counted among the incubator’s other partners. Aramco, however, is the largest of these, extracting an average of 13.6 million barrels of oil equivalent each day last year and reporting a record net income of $161.1 billion in 2022.

Greentown is explicit about their focus on sustainability and climate-forward technology. How, then, can a partnership with the world’s leading fossil-fuel extractor align with the organization’s goals? Greentown’s interim CEO and CFO, Kevin Taylor, suggested that Aramco’s partnership will translate into funding, networking and pilot opportunities for startups and entrepreneurs under the Greentown umbrella. Some benefits that Greentown’s partners receive in return, as stated on the incubator’s website, are a seat on the organization’s advisory board and the opportunity to “demonstrate their climate commitments.”

Whether these corporations’ demonstrations are legitimate or merely greenwashing is up for debate. A recent study by thinktank InfluenceMap found that oil companies’ professed commitment to climate is rarely matched in substance by their investments. Although Aramco was not among the companies included in that study, their $1.5 billion “sustainability fund” – which some Greentown entrepreneurs likely hope to benefit from – represents less than 1% of the company’s profits from 2022 alone.

Aramco also has developments in the works to expand their fossil fuel extraction capacity, which is already the largest in the world. This clashes with the advice of leading climate scientists, who emphasize that rich countries must phase out oil and gas production within the next 12 years in order for our planet to evade the worst effects of climate change.

In a statement on their website, Greentown executives expressed enthusiasm for the partnership. When asked about measures in place to safeguard against the misuse of influence by high-level partners, however, the incubator declined to comment.