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
It was planned to be the year of friendship between China and Japan, but instead we have a brewing conflict over oil.
The headlines of the burgeoning diplomatic spat between China and Japan may be about “disputed islands” but make no mistake, this is a conflict over oil.
It was all meant to be so different: this year is the 40th Anniversary of normalised relations between the two nations, but instead of peace, people are now even talking of war.
Yesterday, tensions rose even further as eleven Chinese warships raced to the disputed Senkaku archipelago, over which both countries claim sovereignty.
A flotilla of
The unfolding nuclear emergency in Japan once again highlights the vulnerability of our centralised energy infrastructure to major disasters or even a potential terrorist attack.
At the moment all efforts must go to containing and controlling the nuclear disaster at Japan’s Fukushima plant. When this is done, at some time serious questions need to be asked and answered. The wisdom of sighting nuclear power plants on such a seismically active fault line now seems to be wholeheartedly reckless.
But once again the safety of the nuclear industry per se will be in the dock. As
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.