PUBLIC FINANCE
Governments are still spending billions subsidizing oil, gas and coal. We need to #StopFundingFossils and start investing in the future.
OVERVIEW OF WORK
Since the Paris Agreement, G20 governments have continued to finance more than USD 77 billion dollars annually in fossil fuels through multilateral development banks (MDBs), bilateral development finance institutions (DFIs), and export credit agencies (ECAs). This is three times the support they provide to clean energy. Beyond providing this direct monetary backing, these institutions reduce perceived risk and provide a government stamp of approval on fossil fuel projects that often serves to crowd in private finance. While recently the level of fossil fuel support has started to drop, institutional policies to exclude fossil fuel finance are needed to ensure this progress continues.
While a number of public finance institutions committed to ending coal finance in the early 2010s, it wasn’t until 2017, following years of campaign pressure by Oil Change and others, that the World Bank made a meaningful commitment to stop financing for upstream oil and gas. Following an intense campaign effort, in 2019 the European Investment Bank committed to ending nearly all oil, gas and coal finance. Recently, the UK announced it would end overseas oil and gas finance, and the EU and US, among others, have signalled that they intend to follow suit. Building off these successes, OCI is now working to secure further commitments from governments and public finance institutions on ending public finance for fossil fuels.
LATEST PROGRAM POSTS
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.
Today – just a few months before landmark climate change negotiation in Paris – a little-known working group within the OECD met to discuss a big issue: should rich countries continue to push dirty coal technologies overseas, or should they finally set some limits on financing climate destruction?
The question is an important one, as a recent analysis by Oil Change International, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the World Wide Fund for Nature found that the export credit agencies of OECD countries supported $34 billion in coal investments between 2007 and 2014, representing a huge global giveaway to big coal.
With alternatives
G20 leaders first pledged to end fossil fuel subsidies back in 2009. Almost six years later, and despite reiterating that vow each and every year, they have precious little to show for it.
As another round of UN climate negotiations wraps up today in Bonn, expectations are taking shape for the end of the year Paris conference where countries will have yet another chance to prove they are ready to take on one of the world’s greatest challenges.
Nobody (with the possible exceptions of Canada, Australia, and Japan who have become the global climate laggards) wants another Copenhagen fiasco. And you can bet that countries will spend the coming months tripping over each other to announce new efforts to avoid arriving to Paris in December empty handed.
There is no shortage of questions to be
LATEST PROGRAM RESEARCH
This briefing illustrates how G7 public finance flows remain severely misaligned with climate goals. G7 public finance for fossil fuels between 2018 and 2020 totalled over USD 100 billion, four times its support for renewable energy.
Russia’s war in Ukraine and fuel price spikes mean international public finance institutions must roll out rapid decarbonization and aid packages, not back track by locking in new fossil infrastructure
This briefing explains why financial flows to fossil fuels matter and how to use the data provided by the Public Finance for Energy Database to help secure a just energy transition.