At least 20 countries have agreed to end funding for fossil fuel projects abroad, a UK official told CNN, in an agreement to be announced on Thursday (4).
Another source close to the COP26 climate summit talks said the US was party to the deal. US State Department officials did not respond to the CNN to confirm country involvement.
Several countries had already agreed to end international financing for coal, but this agreement would be the first of its kind to also include oil and gas projects.
The agreement “represents a change in regulations that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago,” Iskander Erzini Vernoit, climate finance expert at think tank E3G, told CNN. “We saw it go from niche frontier concepts to the center of an ideological current.”
In October, the United Nations Environment Program’s annual “production gap” report revealed that 15 major fossil fuel-generating countries will produce about 110% more coal, oil and gas in 2030 than would be needed to limit the warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels – and 45% more than would be consistent with 2 degrees.
A recent study published in the journal Nature found that the vast majority of the planet’s remaining oil, natural gas and coal reserves must remain in the ground until 2050 to avoid these consequences. Most regions around the world, according to the authors, must peak fossil fuel production now or in the next decade to limit the climate critical threshold.
And the latest forecasts from the International Energy Agency say more aggressive climate action is needed by world leaders, even as the shift to clean energy leads to a decline in the oil industry.
In a rare move during the UN General Assembly in September in New York, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced that the country will not build any new coal-fired energy projects abroad. The vote marks a shift in policy around its broad Belt and Road infrastructure initiative, which had already begun to scale back its coal initiatives.
Xi added that China will also increase financial assistance for green and low-carbon energy projects to other developing countries.
The output gap report found that the world’s largest economies have channeled more than $300 billion in new funds into fossil fuel activities since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, which is more than they invested in clean energy alternatives.
“The modeling results show that all three fuels – coal, oil and gas – basically need to have started to decline since 2020 so that we can remain consistent with a path that will allow us to be consistent with limiting long-term warming to 1, 5 degrees C,” said Ploy Achakulwisut, lead author of the report and scientist at the Stockholm Environmental Institute.
“Continuing to delay action will only make the problem more difficult,” he added.
Julia Horowitz of CNN Business contributed to this report.
(Text translated, read original in English here)
Reference: CNN Brasil
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