ASIA
In Asia, we’re fighting the buildout of gas infrastructure and working towards an end to all finance for fossil fuels.
OVERVIEW OF WORK
One of the greatest threats to meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement is the buildout of gas infrastructure in Asia. As campaigners move from successful campaigns to stop coal buildout, Oil Change is working with partners across the region and internationally to increase awareness that gas is dirty, expensive and undermines development.
We are working with the Fossil Free Japan coalition to stop Japanese public finance for overseas gas, coal and oil projects and are also working to push the Asian Development Bank to stop financing fossil fuels.
LATEST PROGRAM POSTS
The message in today’s Asian Financial Times is simple: climate leaders don’t fund coal.
“Cigarettes are good for you.” The tobacco industry successfully peddled this myth for decades. Today, nobody would believe them, and the boldness of the lie seems staggering in retrospect. But Japan, under the leadership of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, seems determined to give the tobacco industry a run for its money with another big lie: their government continues to use public funds to push dirty coal plants that they call “efficient,” even as the world burns.
In recent years, Japan has become the world’s most desperate pusher of dirty coal technology. They have insisted that their dirty coal plants are “efficient”
New analysis released today at the COP21 climate negotiations reveals that G7 countries along with Australia spend 40 times more on support for fossil fuel production than they do in contributions to the Green Climate Fund.
Next week, on November 14th, we’re raising some noise. We are demanding our leaders live up to their commitments. We’re demanding they square their climate rhetoric with action. We’re telling them to Stop Funding Fossils.
LATEST PROGRAM RESEARCH
This briefing, "Japan's Dirty Secret: World's top fossil fuel financier is fueling climate chaos and undermining energy security," reveals that Japan is the world’s largest public financier of fossil fuel projects, providing 10.6 billion USD per year between 2019 and 2021. Japan has been leading the drive to expand gas consumption in Asia and is the world’s leading financier of gas infrastructure globally, spending USD 6.7 billion on gas projects on average each year between 2019 and 2021.
This report looks at G20 country and MDB traceable international public finance for fossil fuels from 2019-2021 and finds they are still backing at least USD 55 billion per year in oil, gas, and coal projects. This is a 35% drop compared to previous years (2016-2018), but still, almost twice the support provided for clean energy, which averaged only $29 billion per year.
Asia is one of the few remaining growth markets for gas. The fossil fuel industry and its proponents are pushing to develop $379 billion of gas terminals, pipelines and power plants in Asia over the next decade. Roughly three-quarters of all Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) import terminals in development globally are planned for Asia. This aggressive buildout ignores a simple truth.