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.
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.
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.
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.