GLOBAL POLICY
The Paris climate goals demand a rapid, just transition from fossil fuels to clean energy. We’re pushing governments to lead the way by adopting policies to end oil and gas production.
OVERVIEW OF WORK
In order to achieve climate goals, governments and other decision makers must support a just and equitable move away from fossil fuels. We are pushing for precedent-setting leadership from governments to put policies in place to manage the decline of oil and gas and ensure a just transition for fossil-fuel dependent workers and communities.
Building from a growing group of first mover governments, we are pressuring for increasing numbers of national and regional governments to end new licenses and permits for oil and gas production, and to develop plans to wind down their existing production over time.
LATEST PROGRAM POSTS
Some two weeks after the UN Montreal talks scraped together an 11th hour deal on climate change there is still a raging debate on whether it was a good deal or not. Environmental groups from Europe were surprising upbeat about Montreal in the immediate aftermath. Friends of the Earth called it an “historic step” forwards that “sent a clear signal that the future lies in cleaner and more sustainable technologies and is good news for people everywhere”.
Blair gets an Official Warning over Inaction on Climate
The US is usually seen as the villain over climate and rightly so – see - click here
However, the day after the Montreal meeting, Tony Blair faced the wrath of his own watchdog on sustainable development. For the first time ever the “Sustainable Development Commission”, measured government performances in certain key areas such as biodiversity, energy usage and climate change.
BP Goes Green Again.
BP is at it again. Whether it is completely coincidental that we have had the Montreal meeting, the melting Arctic, extreme weather and extreme profits of the oil companies, but BP is in the middle of an unprecedented greenwashing campaign, trying to persuade the public, politicians and who ever else is listening that they are a green energy company.
Although Russia has now switched the tap back on allowing gas exports to resume at full strength to the Ukraine, the ramifications of the dispute are still rumbling across Europe.
You could argue that the Russian action could be beneficial in that it has woken people up to the problems of long-term energy security based on fossil fuels from foreign lands.
I think many people are shocked to find out just how dependent Europe is on Russian gas. We now know that this dependency will only grow.
LATEST PROGRAM RESEARCH
This new report, “Public Enemies: Assessing MDB and G20 international finance institutions’ energy finance” looks at G20 country and MDB traceable international public finance for fossil fuels from 2020-2022 and finds they are still backing at least USD 47 billion per year in oil, gas, and coal projects.
This briefing assesses Shell’s fossil fuel extraction plans in light of Shell's appeal of a Dutch court verdict requiring the company to take responsibility for its climate pollution. Our analysis shows that Shell continues to plan for levels of oil and gas production and investment that undermine the world’s chances of curtailing climate disaster.
The countries that produce oil and gas from the North Sea (Norway, the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark) rank among the countries with the greatest economic capacity and responsibility to rapidly phase out extraction, and to finance just transitions to renewable energy solutions domestically and abroad.