Research

US non-profit Ceres has produced a paper aimed at explaining actions that oil and gas exploration and production companies (E&Ps) can take to reduce their emissions. It is also supposed to provide useful information on climate alignment to the sector’s investors and bankers. The paper suffers from a number of alarming weaknesses which threaten to reverse progress on setting standards for net-zero finance. Consequently, Reclaim Finance, Oil Change International, urgewald, CIEL, and Stand.Earth have jointly published this analysis in response.

The World Bank Group continues to invest in exploration for new fossil fuel reserves despite clear signs that we already have far more fossil fuels than we can afford to burn, and over the last five years, the World Bank Group’s total fossil fuel finance has trended upwards, with finance into the billions of dollars nearly every year.

Despite repeated calls for urgent action on climate change, the World Bank Group increased funding for fossil fuels in its last fiscal year. The World Bank’s increase in fossil fuel finance is especially disappointing as 2014 was the first full fiscal year following the World Bank’s commitment to limit coal financing due to climate concerns.

Public support for fossil fuel exploration in rich countries is nearly triple the amount pledged to the Green Climate Fund.

G20 countries are estimated to be spending $88 billion every year subsidising exploration for fossil fuels. This new report documents, for the first time, the scale and structure of fossil fuel exploration subsidies in the G20 countries.

A new report by Oil Change International identifies billions of dollars in subsidies for fossil fuel exploration from the world’s wealthiest countries.

World Bank Group finance for fossil fuel exploration projects from FY2008 to 2013 was highest in 2013, at nearly $1 billion out of $2.7 billion total for fossil fuel projects.