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.
This is a monumental failure of leadership. Bad deals like this are not why we send Democrats to Washington.
The Export-Import Bank cannot continue providing billions to fossil fuel projects that wreak havoc on the climate and local communities.
The U.S. House of Representatives today voted to approve the United States Export Finance Agency Act of 2019, putting the chamber’s stamp of approval on a 10-year reauthorization of the U.S. Export-Import Bank (EXIM)—the U.S. Government’s largest source of public financing for overseas fossil fuel projects.
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.