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.
The U.S. Export-Import Bank’s (EXIM) Board of Directors today voted to approve $5 billion in financing for a liquid natural gas project in Mozambique.
The House Financial Services Committee today will consider a bill to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank, the U.S. government’s official export credit agency. The Ex-Im Bank is one of the largest sources of federal financing for fossil fuel projects abroad.
As Congress considers the reauthorization of Ex-Im Bank, it is a rare opportunity to restrict U.S. financing of fossil fuel projects overseas. Any reauthorization must place a moratorium on the billions of dollars in support the bank provides for coal, oil and gas projects around the world.
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.