BP sponsors and surveils STEM education in UK schools

• United Kingdom

• We Are Futures

• BP

Fossil fuel companies, including BP, have a long history of funding education and promoting jobs to make an impression on young minds. Since 2019, London-based agency We Are Futures has protected and promoted BP’s brand with young people, and the F-List shows that this partnership has continued until 2025. Through the Energising Futures program, We Are Futures are operating a program which aims to create a “pipeline” of future workers for BP.

We Are Futures specialize in brand advocacy in schools and youth programs and recognize the power of what children believe, noting that “nine out of ten children influence the purchasing power of their parents” and “58% of adults say that teenagers influence them more than any other group.”

Energising Futures is a free STEM education platform offering curriculum-linked resources to UK schools, developed in partnership with the Association for Science Education, giving the programme institutional legitimacy.

However, the homepage of the Energising Futures website contains no mention of BP. Only with further digging does their partnership with BP appear, but without any hyperlinks or branding, just a mention that they receive “funding from bp, helping to support the STEM skills development needed to create a diverse, highly skilled workforce for the future.”  

BP is the data controller of all users who sign up to its platform, using an integrated CRM system to give BP granular intelligence on how its materials move through classrooms across the country. This gives them a unique vantage point to understand how to influence young people and maintain social license.

BP also organized the Ultimate STEM Challenge, a previous iteration of the Energising Futures program, which brought children aged 11 to 14 to the Science Museum in London for a competition judged by BP engineers. (Update: In August 2026, the Science Museum ended its long-standing corporate partnership with BP. Indian coal company, Adani, remains a sponsor.)