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

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT:
Elizabeth Bast, Oil Change International, 202-641-7203, ebast [at] priceofoil [dot] org
Patricia Brooks, ActionAid USA, 202-351-1757

Report Finds World Bank’s Energy Lending Fails to Target the Poorest, Calls for Decentralized Clean Energy to Achieve Development Goals



WASHINGTON, D.C. – New research released today by Oil Change International, ActionAid International and Vasudha Foundation in India reveals the World Bank Group’s energy lending is not targeted at the world’s poorest.  The report finds only 9 percent of the World Bank Group’s energy lending in the last two years targets energy for the poor.

A review of World Bank energy lending

For the past year, the World Bank has been reviewing its strategy for energy lending.  Responding to years of critiques and complaints from communities, activists, the Bank has taken a year to confirm what development advocates have been saying for quite a while: ensuring energy access for the poor is a critical step in alleviating poverty.

The World Bank claims it focuses on the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals, eight anti-poverty goals agreed on by the United Nations to help the world’s poorest people.  Just last month, India’s environment minister Jairam Ramesh, called for universal energy access for the poor,

The subsidy battle raging in Washington at the moment is all about what are known as “production” subsidies. These are subsidies that are paid to the oil majors to keep the oil and gas flowing.

But there is also another type of subsidy: this is where governments, often in countries producing oil or developing countries, subsidise the cost of that oil to consumers, by artificially keeping the cost of oil low.

To many it is a slightly crazy idea for governments that should be trying to wean people off our fossil-fuel addiction, carry on subsidising the

This is a cross-post from Transition Voice. Written by Erik Curren

Can the president who killed Osama bin Laden now stand up to Big Oil?

Encouraged by comments made by House Speaker John Boehner that subsidies for oil and gas companies should be on the table, Democrats led by Montana Sen. Max Baucus last week revived their stalled effort to cut billions per year in taxpayer handouts to the largest oil companies.

No surprise, Big Oil is not going gently into that good night, even after just reporting profits up 30% from last year. At the same time, ordinary families who

LATEST PROGRAM RESEARCH

"Today’s announcement from the Netherlands, United Kingdom, Canada and many of their peers is a disappointment. At a time when we need rich country leaders to concretely expand their past ambition to secure a fair deal, these ministers are just regurgitating promises and initiatives that are now more than a decade old and have been so ineffective that fossil fuel handouts and profits continue to reach record levels."