When University President Mary Sue Coleman announced an array of University sustainability initiatives , the cost of the programs amounted to a $14 million investment.

However, the University also committed $60 million to the energy sector of its long-term portfolio last June, composed entirely of companies associated with oil.

About half of the long term portfolio is composed of marketable securities, including cash and equities, while the other half is made up of alternative assets, which is divided into four different sectors — venture capital, private equity, real estate and energy.

Returns to the University’s endowment help contribute to sustainability efforts among other things, and were worth $7.8 billion last June. Of that $7.8 billion, $814.8 million was invested in the energy sector.

In an investments report distributed to the University’s Board of Regents, all 15 of the companies — including Merit Energy Company, Natural Gas Partners, Encap Energy and Yorktown Energy Partners — are in the energy sector and related to the oil industry. While the investment report does not specifically say that all of the companies invested in by the University are associated with oil, the individual companies listed in the report all support, finance or invest in oil companies by, among other things, acquiring property with producing reserves, investing in drilling and technology or investing equity in oil companies.

At 10 percent, most of the endowment invested in energy and subsequently, oil companies, is lower than the other investment sectors but it had a large return for the endowment last year at 30 percent, or about $244.4 million — far more than the $14 million sustainability investment.

“Oil prices ended the year approximately 30 percent higher than at the beginning and natural gas prices remained relatively flat,” the University’s investment report reads. “The increase in oil prices positively impacted the valuations of the reserves held by our reserve acquisition managers and the energy private equity managers in our portfolio continued to take advantage of a strong market to sell portfolio companies.”

Despite increasing oil prices that contribute to the positive endowment return, the University invested nearly $3 million, accompanied by a $720,000 grant from the Department of Energy, to purchase seven hybrid buses. The University also spent $700,000, in addition to a $60,000 from another DOE grant to purchase hybrid sedans for the University’s fleet.

Fitzgerald said the University prefers to not comment about detailed investing choices like the number of oil companies invested in.

“We specifically as a University take an approach of not talking in detail about our investments because investments are something that people are constantly looking at to try to get hints,” Fitzgerald said.

Universities investing portions of their endowment in energy is not uncommon. The University of Texas, a school long regarded for its connection to oil, has 6 percent of its endowment invested in energy related assets, according to Bruce Zimmerman, University of Texas Investment Management Company president. Ohio State University has 8 percent of its endowment invested in energy assets as well, according to OSU spokesman Jim Lynch.

LSA junior Maggie Oliver, chair of the environmental issues commission in Central Student Government, has been involved with sustainability initiatives on campus, most prominently in the push to eliminate the sale of plastic water bottles on campus.

Oliver said that while she wishes the University would move more quickly in developing sustainable efforts, she understands paying for them with funds that receive contributions from energy investments.