Research

This briefing, "Japan's Dirty Secret: World's top fossil fuel financier is fueling climate chaos and undermining energy security," reveals that Japan is the world’s largest public financier of fossil fuel projects, providing 10.6 billion USD per year between 2019 and 2021. Japan has been leading the drive to expand gas consumption in Asia and is the world’s leading financier of gas infrastructure globally, spending USD 6.7 billion on gas projects on average each year between 2019 and 2021.

This report looks at G20 country and MDB traceable international public finance for fossil fuels from 2019-2021 and finds they are still backing at least USD 55 billion per year in oil, gas, and coal projects. This is a 35% drop compared to previous years (2016-2018), but still, almost twice the support provided for clean energy, which averaged only $29 billion per year.

The Mountain Valley Pipeline will not enable U.S. LNG exporters to export more gas to Europe, is not needed in the Southeast, and will increase GHG emissions and make it harder to reach our climate targets. MVP is a false solution looking for a problem. It’s out of date and out of time.

New analysis finds that revenues from oil and gas projects backed by European and U.S. companies have fueled Vladimir Putin’s regime to the tune of nearly USD 100 billion since 2014.

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.

Asia is one of the few remaining growth markets for gas. The fossil fuel industry and its proponents are pushing to develop $379 billion of gas terminals, pipelines and power plants in Asia over the next decade. Roughly three-quarters of all Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) import terminals in development globally are planned for Asia. This aggressive buildout ignores a simple truth.

The new report finds that wealthy nations — the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Norway, and Australia — planning to approve and subsidize new fossil fuel projects which undermines their recent claims of leadership in addressing the climate crisis.

This impending buildout of new gas infrastructure poses one of the greatest threats to meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement. Instead of forming a bridge — as gas proponents claim — gas expansion builds a wall against the clean energy future we need.

One day before world leaders meet to discuss the energy transition at the United Nations High Level Dialogue on Energy, more than 200 civil society organizations (CSOs) from over 40 countries have released a statement calling on world leaders to end international public finance for coal, oil and gas. 

There is growing recognition that central banks must act to confront the climate crisis. They have the tools to catalyze and accelerate the end of financing for fossil fuels – through monetary policy, regulatory action, and excluding fossil fuel assets from their own portfolios. But, with only limited exceptions, they are not using these tools. This report identifies 10 criteria for assessing central banks against the Paris Agreement’s objective, and applies them to assess 12 major central banks.