NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

The name Rockefeller is deeply synonymous with turning oil into gold. Familial patriarch John D. Rockefeller founded Standard Oil in 1870 and bought up most of the oil refineries in the United States, eventually controlling over 90 percent of the American oil business. “Competition,” he said, “is a sin.”

That empire, in inflation-adjusted terms, made him the richest man in history with a fortune estimated at $336 billion in 2010 dollars. The Standard Oil monopoly, meanwhile, was broken up and evolved into the global oil brands Exxon-Mobil, Amoco, and Chevron.

But the times they are a-changin’, and you don’t need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

Rockefeller’s descendants — who still control a cool $860 million through the family philanthropy, the Rockefeller Brothers fund — are dumping the endowment’s investments in the oil business and reinvesting at least a portion of that wealth into renewable energy.