Public Energy Financing Overseas
As part of our international sustainable finance campaign, we track government-backed institutions that fund energy projects overseas. We work to end public financing of fossil fuels and to give a voice to affected communities.
Maroš Šefčovič, the European Commission's vice president for the energy union, today held a meeting with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, capping off a trip aimed at securing long-term fossil fuel energy exports from the United States.
From 2013 to 2015, the world’s largest ECAs provided an annual average of USD 38 billion in support of fossil fuels. Eighty-eight percent of ECA support for energy projects went toward fossil fuels, compared to only seven percent for clean energy projects.
Friends of the Earth U.S. today revealed that the Japanese government’s two export credit agencies — Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) and Nippon Export and Investment Insurance (NEXI) — continue to fund some of the world’s dirtiest coal plants.
It fails to transfer to the new institution OPIC’s existing environmental, social, climate, transparency, worker rights, human rights, indigenous peoples, gender, anti-corruption and accountability policies — putting communities, the environment and the U.S. government at risk.
As they gather in the shadow of the UN Climate Conference, ECAs must cease business as usual and finally move in a new and more sustainable direction by ending all support of fossil fuels by 2020 at the latest.
After providing almost $6 billion annually to fossil fuels from 2013 to 2015, the U.S. export credit agency – the U.S. Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im) – has been unable to finance large fossil fuel projects for the past two years.