Press Room

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil - Today, UK Prime Minister Starmer and Brazilian President Lula launched the Global Clean Power Alliance (GCPA) at the Brazil-led G20. The initiative focuses on supporting emerging and developing economies with building out clean energy, including through a ‘finance mission’, and is launched as governments at COP29 in Baku struggle to reach convergence on a new climate finance target.

At a COP29 press conference, the United Kingdom, Colombia, and New Zealand announced they are joining the Dutch-led Coalition on Phasing Out Fossil Fuel Incentives (COFFIS) launched at COP28. While Civil Society Organizations applaud the growing membership, they urge all members to move beyond merely identifying fossil fuel subsidies—estimated at hundreds of billions annually—and take decisive action to eliminate these handouts that artificially sustain fossil fuel industry profits.

As COP29 enters its second week in Baku with the arrival of environment ministers, a pivotal moment for climate finance emerges across three crucial forums. While negotiators continue debating the new climate finance goal (NCQG), world leaders and finance ministers gather for the G20 summit in Rio—where the UK, Canada, EU, and other wealthy nations hold the key to unlocking ambitious climate action.

South Korea has won the closely-watched Fossil of the Day award, the first award of the second week of negotiations at COP29 in Baku. Korea has won the award for being the last major blocker on a potential historic deal that would end USD $41 billion dollars a year in export finance for fossil fuels.

As COP29 enters its second week in Baku, a parallel opportunity for climate finance leadership emerges in Paris, where OECD governments will gather to negotiate an end to $41 billion in annual oil and gas export subsidies.

At the United Nations Climate Change Conference today, experts and advocates exposed how oil and gas corporations and their government enablers are more interested in appearing to act on climate change than taking real action, while continuing to poison communities and delay the transition away from fossil fuels.

As COP29 enters its sixth day, negotiators release the latest draft text for the new climate finance goal (NCQG). A critical opportunity emerges to secure real climate action through public grants rather than problematic private finance schemes.

While the draft text still includes options for real climate finance through public grants and fossil fuel phaseout support, we must fight this calculated attempt to shift responsibility to pay up from polluting nations to private investors who have time and time again prioritized profits over people and planet. For a liveable planet, we need trillions in public grants, not more accounting tricks that let rich countries dodge their responsibilities.

Today, At COP29, in the OPEC and the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) pavilions, activists directly exposed and denounced the presence of the fossil fuel industry at COP29.

As COP29 enters its fifth day in Baku, the stark choice facing negotiators is clear: either deliver real solutions through public grants of at least $1 trillion annually in public funds, or fall back on inadequate private sector mechanisms that would not deliver the just energy transition while also exacerbating the Global South's debt crisis.