Research

*Updated March 27, 2025* At the UN COP26 climate conference, signatories of the Clean Energy Transition Partnership (CETP) agreed to international public finance for fossil fuels. This briefing, which will be updated regularly as new policies come out and new signatories join the commitment, tracks implementation efforts and assesses whether countries are on track to keep their promise.

The Glasgow Statement on public finance requires signatories to end new direct overseas support for fossil fuels by the end of 2022 and fully prioritize finance for a clean and just energy transition. But only a handful of signatories have begun to turn these pledges into action.

This briefing illustrates how G7 public finance flows remain severely misaligned with climate goals. G7 public finance for fossil fuels between 2018 and 2020 totalled over USD 100 billion, four times its support for renewable energy.

This briefing explains why financial flows to fossil fuels matter and how to use the data provided by the Public Finance for Energy Database to help secure a just energy transition.

Between 2016, following the adoption of the Paris Climate Agreement, and June 2021, public and private financial institutions poured at least $132 billion in lending and underwriting into 964 gas, oil and coal projects in West, East, Central and Southern Africa. The vast majority of this finance came from financial institutions based outside Africa, both commercial banks and public institutions such as development banks and Export Credit Agencies.

The Sky’s Limit Africa assesses fossil fuel industry plans to sink USD $230 billion into the development of new extraction projects in Africa in the next decade — and USD $1.4 trillion by 2050. It finds these projects are not compatible with a safe climate future and that they are at risk of becoming stranded assets that leave behind unfunded clean-up, shortfalls of government revenue, and overnight job losses.

Released ahead of crucial UN climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland, this report examines why UK and Scottish Government policy to maximise oil and gas extraction from the North Sea is incompatible with stated commitments to the Paris Agreement goal of limiting dangerous warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (ºC).

In advance of this year's G7 Summit, 353 organizations from 58 countries have signed a letter calling on G7 leaders to stop financing fossil fuels; cancel debt payments in global South countries grappling with COVID-19 and climate impacts, and pay their fair share of climate finance to global South countries for climate adaptation among other demands.

The creation of the NZPF is a tacit recognition by major oil and gas producers that their contribution to the climate crisis can no longer be ignored. But the framing of the initiative and its main objectives raise the prospect of the NZPF being a greenwashing tool in service to the oil and gas industry’s interests.

In this new report we consider recovery commitments and pre-pandemic policies to rank G20 countries' progress in phasing out support to fossil fuels. We find at least USD 584 billion per year between 2017 and 2019 in public support for fossil fuels from G20 governments.