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.
ECAs (institutions that finance the international operations of corporations from their home country) are the largest public financiers of fossil fuel projects, spending 14 times as much on fossil fuels as clean energy.
A new report released by Friends of the Earth U.S. and Oil Change International reveals G20 countries have provided at least $77 billion a year in public finance to oil, gas and coal projects since the Paris Climate Agreement.
A network of secretive, government-backed financial institutions called export credit agencies are handing more than $31 billion USD per year to the oil, gas, and coal industry, new analysis by Oil Change International and Friends of the Earth U.S. shows.
The headline finding is that from 2016 to 2018 G20 countries provided an average of USD $77 billion a year in public finance for fossil fuels.
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.