Pressure on wealthy governments to stop financing polluting
coal projects in developing nations is getting results, with more countries
announcing they will no longer make such investments.
اضافة اعلان
But the battle is far from won — and is now shifting to
include oil and gas finance, climate change campaigners say.
Britain has led the way among major donors, saying it would
provide no new government financing for fossil fuel projects overseas from this
month, with “very limited” exceptions.
During the Leaders Summit on Climate organized by US
President Joe Biden on Thursday, the United States said its departments and
agencies will seek to end international backing for carbon-intensive fossil
fuel-based energy projects.
They will work with other countries to promote the flow of
capital toward “climate-aligned” investments and away from high-carbon
investments, the White House said in a new international climate finance plan.
Under the plan, the US International Development Finance
Corporation (DFC) pledged to reach net-zero emissions in its investments by
2040 and to increase “climate-focused investment” to 33 percent of its new
allocations starting in fiscal year 2023.
South Korea’s President
Moon Jae-in, meanwhile, announced at
the summit that his country would end all new financing for overseas coal
projects in places like Indonesia and Vietnam.
Japan and Canada could also soon join a handful of European
nations in pledging to phase out overseas aid for coal, climate finance experts
said.
Green groups welcomed the announcements at the summit but
pointed to potential loopholes in the US plan that could enable continued
funding for gas projects.
Last week, 57 US green groups wrote to US climate envoy John
Kerry urging him to “unequivocally declare that gas is not part of the
solution” and to immediately end all fossil fuel support internationally as
well as US exports of fossil fuels “as science and justice require”.
The move came after Kerry told a discussion with the head of
the International Monetary Fund this month that “gas, to some degree, will be a
bridge fuel”, meaning it could smooth the transition from the dirtiest energy
sources — coal and oil — to renewables.
Kate DeAngelis, international finance program manager for
Friends of the Earth, said the DFC’s new net-zero target could allow it to
continue providing support to gas projects, while reaching its emissions goal
by using carbon offsets.
She also noted the new plan to phase out fossil fuel finance
did not cover the US Export-Import Bank, the largest source of US government
financing for fossil fuel projects abroad.
Mozambican gas
This month, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands,
Spain, Sweden, and Britain agreed to harness public export finance as “a key
driver in the fight against climate change”.
Governments in the new Export Finance for Future (E3F)
coalition endorsed principles including ending trade and export support for
coal power that does not have technology to lower its emissions, reviewing
finance for fossil fuels more broadly and assessing how to best phase that
finance out.
But, in a statement, about 20 environmental organisations
said the coalition had made no new commitments.
“To make a real difference, (E3F) needs to take decisive
action to end all export finance for fossil fuels, following at least the level
of ambition shown by the UK,” they said.
They also noted the Netherlands, France, and Britain
continued to provide support for gas extraction in violence-hit northern
Mozambique, saying the investments had forced communities from their homes
after losing their fishing areas and farmland.
On Wednesday, Mozambique President Filipe Nyusi told an
energy conference the government foresees “direct benefits” of more than $100
billion from the gas projects, which are expected to generate 70,000 formal
jobs over 20 years from 2022.
Clean energy advocates disagree, saying such projects could
result in “stranded” assets and job losses as the world moves away from fossil
fuels to curb climate change.
Britain’s high court on Thursday agreed to a request by
Friends of the Earth for a judicial review of the UK’s decision to provide
about $1 billion of taxpayer money to support development of the Temane LNG
plant in Mozambique.
That decision was made on “the incorrect basis” that the
project was consistent with commitments by Britain and Mozambique under the
2015 Paris Agreement to curb global warming, the green group said in a
statement.
It added that construction of the project would increase the
African nation’s greenhouse gas emissions by up to 10 percent by 2022, while
annual emissions from using and burning the gas produced would equal the total
from the EU aviation sector.
“The UK government should be supporting the building of a
cleaner, safer future — not projects that will continue to fuel the climate
emergency for many years to come,” said Will Rundle, head of legal at Friends
of the Earth.
While London’s new policy would prevent it from funding such
projects on climate grounds in future, the British government confirmed to the
Thomson Reuters Foundation that the policy would not apply retrospectively to
the Mozambique financing.
According to a government source, Mozambique considers gas
from the project an important part of its transition to cleaner energy in line
with its national climate action plan and its Paris Agreement commitments.
Boost for renewables
Export finance and development agencies on both sides of the
Atlantic, meanwhile, are keen to stress their backing to expand renewable
energy in poor countries.
UK Export Finance, the government’s export credit agency,
said this week it doubled its support in 2020 to more than 2.4 billion pounds
($3.3 billion) for “sustainable projects”, including hospitals and clean
energy, in developing nations.
And the US DFC recently invited private companies to apply
for public financing to help them expand their businesses in small-scale
renewables, such as solar micro-grids, with plans to invest $100 million in
such firms in a year.
But campaigners say the amount of government money available
for the fossil fuel industry still dwarfs that for clean energy.
According to Oil Change International and Friends of the Earth,
which track such funding, G20 countries from 2016 to 2018 provided an average
of $77 billion per year in public finance for fossil fuels through export
credit agencies and development banks, compared with $24 billion a year for
clean energy.
Laurie van der Burg, an Oil Change International campaigner,
urged the G7 club of the richest nations to set an example and clearly state at
their June summit they will no longer finance coal and will develop plans to
shift away from oil and gas.
“I do think that 2021 has the potential to become the year
in which, for the first time, we see the balance of public finance tip from
fossil fuels to clean energy, because right now it’s still mostly fossil
fuels,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Read more Opinion & Analysis
