STOP FUNDING FOSSILS
Our Stop Funding Fossils program uses critical analysis and strategic organizing to end the vast quantities of government support flowing to the fossil fuel industry and accelerate the clean energy transition.
Public finance and subsidies for fossil fuels play a key role in driving oil, gas, and coal production. Climate leadership means not wasting another cent of public money on the industries that are causing the problem.
OVERVIEW OF WORK
Our research shows that G20 governments spend $444 billion per year propping up oil, gas, and coal production, while the G20’s taxpayer-backed public finance institutions provide nearly 4 times more public finance to fossil fuels than to clean, renewable energy.
These massive subsidies play a key role in expanding oil and gas production and locking in existing fossil fuels: recent analysis finds that half of the new oil fields being drilled in the US would have remained undrilled if not for substantial subsidies; at the same time, public finance for fossil fuels de-risks capital-intensive megaprojects, like massive coal plants in Southeast Asia, few of which would proceed without government backing. And as oil, gas, and coal producers face increasing competition from renewable energy, instead of simply reducing fossil fuel production, they exert their political influence to get more handouts to keep extracting.
Instead of spending scarce public resources on the fossil fuel industry, our work challenges public institutions to scale up their support for distributed renewable energy solutions that can deliver energy access quickly and at least cost in many developing countries: today, support for these solutions makes up only a tiny fraction of all public finance for energy.
We know from the work of our Energy Transitions and Futures program that already-producing oilfields, gasfields, and coal mines hold enough carbon to take the world well beyond 1.5°C of warming and up to 2°C. This means that governments who’ve signed up to the Paris Agreement (that’s nearly everybody) shouldn’t spend another cent of public money on fossil fuels if they take their commitment seriously. We call on them to stop funding fossils.
LATEST PROGRAM POSTS
Policy falls short of a major pledge Spain made at the 2021 COP26 UN climate summit to stop financing fossil fuel projects.
In a landmark decision, the Federal Court of Australia ruled that Santos Ltd, one of the world’s top 20 largest oil and gas companies, would not be allowed to drill in the Barossa gas fields off the coast of northern Australia, solidifying legal victory for the Tiwi Islander Plaintiffs.
Aotearoa New Zealand has released a new policy to live up to its 2021 COP26 UN climate summit commitment to end international finance for fossil fuels, including oil and gas, by the end of 2022.
Today the Government of Canada released a plan to end new public finance for fossil fuels abroad and instead prioritize clean energy projects.
LATEST PROGRAM RESEARCH
Policy falls short of a major pledge Spain made at the 2021 COP26 UN climate summit to stop financing fossil fuel projects.
In a landmark decision, the Federal Court of Australia ruled that Santos Ltd, one of the world’s top 20 largest oil and gas companies, would not be allowed to drill in the Barossa gas fields off the coast of northern Australia, solidifying legal victory for the Tiwi Islander Plaintiffs.
Rather than building momentum towards COP27 through delivering strong policies and a harmonized approach to implementing the collective promise to end international public finance for fossil fuels by the end of 2022, the Summit was overshadowed by backsliding.