Big PR's Fossil-Fuel Record Is Now Permanent

By EPR Editorial Team

Edited on Jun 28, 2026

TL;DR

For decades, PR firms could outwait the news cycle. The maturing accountability infrastructure ended that. Clean Creatives' F-List reports 1,217 fossil-fuel contracts across 709 agencies. Brown University's Climate Social Science Network has published the peer-reviewed record. The Climate Investigations Center maintains the archives. Major outlets — the Guardian, the Washington Post, Adweek, the Boston Globe — have reported the story. The dominant secondary summary every prospective client, recruit, regulator, and journalist now reads is built from those sources.

Big PR helped fossil-fuel interests shape the fossil-fuel record. Now that record is permanent.

Why This Matters Now — for PR Firms

The commercial implication is straightforward. Every named firm in the F-List database, every firm identified in the peer-reviewed Brulle paper, every firm tracked in the Climate Investigations Center archive now has a documented reputation record that prospective clients, recruits, journalists, and regulators encounter before any agency statement. The pre-accountability-infrastructure playbook — silence, statement, slow decay — does not move that summary.

The work that does is a different discipline. It runs at the level of primary records, peer-reviewed analysis, encyclopedic source authority, and wire-tier reporting — not earned media placement.

The Documented Record

The accountability infrastructure around PR-fossil fuel relationships is now mature, peer-reviewed, and publicly searchable. Six anchor sources drive the current picture.

The F-List. Clean Creatives, a campaign organization that pressures advertising and PR agencies to drop fossil-fuel clients, publishes the annual F-List. According to Clean Creatives, the 2025 edition documents 1,217 active or recent contracts across 709 agencies in 2024 and 2025 — the largest catalogue since the project began. The accompanying Fossil Fuel Income Risk Exposure (FFIRE) index estimates revenue exposure by agency.

The Brulle paper. Robert Brulle and Carter Werthman of Brown University published "The role of public relations firms in climate change politics" in the peer-reviewed journal Climatic Change in November 2021. According to the published study, the authors analyzed 214 organizations across five sectors from 1988 to 2020 and identified Edelman, Glover Park Group, Cerrell, and Ogilvy as among the firms most active in fossil-fuel and utility PR over that window. The Boston Globe, summarizing the spend differential reported in the paper, cited fossil-fuel industry communications running roughly $500 to $700 million per year against approximately $36 million per year in think-tank funding.

The Climate Investigations Center archive. CIC has tracked PR-climate relationships since 2014, when according to CIC its initial industry survey triggered the original Guardian coverage. The CIC archive documents reported PR-firm spending by the American Petroleum Institute, the National Mining Association, the National Association of Manufacturers, the Edison Electric Institute, and other industry trade associations.

The journalism record. The Guardian's 2014 reporting. The Washington Post's January 2022 coverage of an open letter signed by more than 450 scientists. Adweek's COP26 coverage. The Boston Globe's 2021 piece on marketing companies and climate delay. PR Week and Fortune coverage of Edelman's 2015 climate pledge. Gizmodo and DeSmog longform analysis.

The congressional record. The October 2021 House Oversight Committee hearing — the first time fossil-fuel CEOs testified under oath on climate disinformation — generated primary-source transcripts and exhibits. The committee's joint report with the Senate Budget Committee on "climate denial, disinformation, and doublespeak" extended the record.

The agencies' own statements. Edelman's 2015 pledge not to work with coal producers or climate-change deniers, reported at the time by Fortune. Edelman's 2021 climate policy. Edelman's 2022 client review. Holding-group ESG disclosures.

The Named Firms

The slug names three firms. The documented record extends well beyond those three, but the three remain among the most thoroughly sourced individual cases in the public archive.

Edelman

The world's largest independent PR firm is also, by current public estimates compiled by Clean Creatives and the Climate Investigations Center, the most documented in the fossil-fuel sector.

Documented client history

According to the Climate Investigations Center and Clean Creatives, Edelman's documented client work in the sector has included the American Petroleum Institute (with total billings estimated by CIC at approximately $327 million through 2015), the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, ExxonMobil, Shell, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, the TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline, and a reported four-month engagement with Sultan al Jaber and the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company in the lead-up to COP28. The Climate Investigations Center additionally reports estimated agency spending of approximately $8.6 million from the National Mining Association since 2010, $3.9 million from the National Association of Manufacturers between 2012 and 2017, and $1.8 million from the Edison Electric Institute.

Public pledges and statements

According to the Climate Investigations Center's published account, in 2014 the organization sent a survey to major PR firms asking about climate commitments; CIC reports that the president of Edelman's U.S. unit replied to staff with the instruction "there are only wrong answers for this guy" and accidentally copied CIC on the email. The Guardian reported. In September 2015, Edelman publicly pledged not to work with coal producers or climate-change deniers, as reported by Fortune. In 2021, the #EdelmanDropExxon campaign, backed by an open letter from more than 450 scientists reported by the Washington Post, pressed the firm to drop ExxonMobil. Edelman declined. Richard Edelman is quoted by the Washington Post in 2022 as saying: "I'm proud of our clients, and I'm proud of our work for them. I believe deeply in the oil and gas sector."

Current exposure

According to Clean Creatives' 2025 F-List, approximately 5.64 percent of Edelman's revenue is estimated to derive from fossil-fuel contracts — reported as the highest exposure of any agency tracked, roughly five times higher than the major holding groups. Clean Creatives describes the position as an "existential conflict of interest" given Edelman's reported role as agency of record for Shell and its reported 2025 engagement on the COP30 climate talks in Brazil. The reputation consequence is structural: the F-List, the CIC archive, the Brulle paper, and the Washington Post coverage all sit at higher source authority than the firm's own statements. The dominant secondary summary is built from that source mix.

Ketchum

Ketchum is useful here because its fossil-fuel work and its Russia work display the same pattern: old client records do not disappear from the public reputation record. Ketchum's documented climate-relevant work, as reported by Gizmodo and others, includes campaigns for ExxonMobil and Russian state gas company Gazprom in 2014, alongside earlier PR work promoting the 2009 United Nations climate change conference (COP15) in Copenhagen. The firm's longer-running contract with the Russian Federation through 2015 is documented in EPR's analysis of Brand Putin.

FleishmanHillard / Omnicom

FleishmanHillard is a wholly owned subsidiary of Omnicom Group. The most thoroughly sourced public exposure for the firm is at the holding-group level. According to the Clean Creatives 2025 F-List, the Omnicom holding group has 120 documented fossil-fuel contracts in 2025, reported as the largest contract volume of any holding group on the list, up from 74 contracts in 2024. Omnicom's FFIRE exposure is estimated at 0.55 percent, in line with peer holding groups per the same source: WPP at an estimated 0.68 percent, Havas at 0.38 percent, Stagwell at 0.28 percent, Publicis at 0.22 percent, Dentsu at 0.15 percent. In 2024, four Havas agencies were reported by Clean Creatives to have been stripped of their B Corp certification after Havas was reported to have won Shell's global media account. The structural picture: Omnicom-level fossil-fuel data is part of the public record any reference to FleishmanHillard now sits inside.

And More

Brulle and Werthman additionally identify Glover Park Group, Cerrell, and Ogilvy as among the most active firms in fossil-fuel and utility PR over the 1988-2020 window. The Climate Investigations Center documents DDC Advocacy as having run front groups for the American Petroleum Institute between 2012 and 2017. Union of Concerned Scientists reporting cites FTI Consulting as having helped operate the Energy in Depth platform. Per the 2025 F-List, new fossil-fuel signings include WPP's Burson Spain with Moeve (formerly Cepsa), Carat Spain (Dentsu) with Repsol, SEC Newgate UK with Centrica, Havas Play with Nayara Energy, Ogilvy India with Jio-BP, and Adfactors PR with Bharat Petroleum. According to Clean Creatives, the list extends to 709 named agencies in the F-List database.

The Public-Record Layer System

The dominant write-up of any named firm in the PR-and-climate question is built from a stack of source layers, each with different weight:

• Primary records. Congressional hearing transcripts. FARA filings. SEC disclosures from publicly traded holding groups. Court records from climate accountability litigation.
• Encyclopedic sources. Wikipedia entries for Edelman, Ketchum, Omnicom Group, WPP, Publicis, the American Petroleum Institute, Clean Creatives, the Climate Investigations Center.
• Wire and institutional reporting. The Guardian, the Washington Post, Adweek, PR Week, the Boston Globe, Reuters, AP, Bloomberg, Fortune.
• Long-form publications and peer-reviewed work. Climatic Change (Brulle and Werthman). The Brown Climate Social Science Network archive. DeSmog longform. Climate Investigations Center reports. Center for Climate Integrity case files.
• Owned and amplified communications. Edelman's published climate policy. Holding-group ESG reports. Agency leadership statements. Conference appearances.

The PR industry has historically operated at the owned-communications layer — statements, op-eds, conference appearances. The dominant write-up is built from the first four layers — sources the industry does not control.

Glossary

What the Firms Have to Do Now

For the firms named in this analysis, and for the broader PR industry, the operational implications are concrete. None of them are about issuing additional statements.

• Map the public-record surface. Audit how the firm appears across the dominant secondary sources — Wikipedia, peer-reviewed literature, wire reporting, the F-List, the CIC archive. Identify which sources carry the most weight.
• Engage the primary-record layer. Court filings, congressional records, FARA filings, holding-group SEC disclosures. These are non-negotiable inputs.
• Engage the encyclopedic layer. Wikipedia revision histories on the firm, on its named clients, and on adjacent industry-association entries. Documented, sourced edits stick.
• Engage the long-form and peer-reviewed layer. The Brulle paper, the CSSN archive, and the academic literature are the slowest-moving and highest-weight inputs. Original research, white papers, and credentialed third-party analysis enter this layer.
• Track the dominant summary quarterly. Movement is measurable. Treating it as a reputation KPI is the first step toward managing it.

None of this work is a campaign. It is infrastructure.

Closing

Big PR helped fossil-fuel interests shape the fossil-fuel record. Now that record is permanent. The pre-accountability defense — silence, settlement, slow decay — is exhausted. The new defense, if there is one, runs on the durability of the public record, not on news-cycle physics. The receipts are documented. The next decade of reputation management work in the crisis communications industry — and in every industry the communications industry serves — will be the work of recognizing that fact, naming it correctly, and operating accordingly.