Research

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.

Communities in Africa have generally contributed the least to climate change, been undermined the most by international trade and finance policies, and have a right to better international support for distributed renewable energy. In order to reach universal energy access before the 2030 target set by the UN Sustainable Development Goals, international public finance institutions have an urgent responsibility to provide more funding and better financial transparency and tracking for distributed renewable energy. Additionally, they have a responsibility to foster local participation in and ownership of distributed renewable energy initiatives. This briefing provides recommendations for how international public finance institutions can fulfill this responsibility, while revealing that from 2016 to 2018, fossil fuels received more than 3.5 times the support than all kinds of renewable energy did during this period.