At a time when governments must ramp up their climate efforts, the Scottish Government’s backtracking is a catastrophic betrayal. Once a UK leader on climate policy, Scotland is turning its back on scientific evidence and international obligations, to line the pockets of oil and gas executives and save face after missing eight of the last 12 annual emissions targets.

Japanese financing of LNG projects has a legacy of environmental and human harm, especially along the US Gulf Coast. Japanese private banks (MUFG, Mizuho, SMBC) are the top three financiers for LNG export terminals in the U.S., and the U.S. is the largest exporter of LNG in the world.

On April 10-11, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will meet with U.S. President Joe Biden in Washington, DC, address Congress, and join a trilateral meeting with Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr.. This visit comes on the heels of the Biden Administration’s decision to pause pending LNG export approvals to non-free trade countries after intense pressure from frontline communities. Many don’t realize that Japan is one of the largest financiers of U.S. LNG export projects and is working to derail clean energy transitions across Asia and globally. 

New report shows that between 2020 and 2022, G20 governments and the multilateral development banks (MDBs) provided $142 billion in international public finance for fossil fuels, almost 1.4 times their support for clean energy in the same period.

As CERAWeek – the fossil fuel industry’s largest annual conference of the year – kicks off today, industry insiders will be out in force to continue peddling greenwashing schemes that claim “certified” gas is “cleaner” and less harmful to the climate.