Our new report looks at G20 countries and multilateral development banks’ international public finance for fossil fuels from 2019 – 2021. We find these countries and institutions are still bankrolling at least USD 55 billion per year in international public finance for fossil fuels. 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 good news is that about one third of this decrease is driven by new fossil free investment policies coming into effect. The bad news is that rest is either very likely “false hope” — already overturned by early 2022 data or driven by declining data transparency — or simply from unknown factors. We also know there are gaps in the data and likely increases in indirect finance that is harder to track — so unless more countries join the group of first movers ending their public finance for fossils, this decrease will be temporary.
This research is coming at a particularly important moment because at COP27, we can tip the global public finance scale away from fossil fuels and in favor of clean energy — if countries keep their COP26 pledge to #StopFundingFossils by the end of 2022.
Photo by Melvinas Priananda/Trend Asia
