(Climate Change News, Broadstairs UK, 3 November 2023) At Cop26 in Glasgow, hundreds of governments and private institutions joined forces in a series of pledges promising ambitious goals on methane reduction, forest protection and the shift of finance away from fossil fuels. End new direct public support for the international unabated fossil fuel energy sector by the end of 2022, except in limited and clearly defined circumstances that are consistent with a 1.5°C warming limit and the goals of the Paris Agreement. 34 countries and five development banks – predominantly from wealthy cuontries – signed up to the pledge at Cop26. These included the G7 nations – with the exception of Japan – and most EU member states. HOW IT IS GOING: Among the signatories that give lots of money to the energy sector, the vast majority have introduced policies in line with the promise made in Glasgow. The United Kingdom, France, Denmark, New Zealand, Canada, Finland and Sweden have stopped providing loans and guarantees for oil and gas extraction and processing overseas through their export credit agencies. Their actions have shifted at least $5.7 billion per year in public finance out of fossil fuels and into clean energy, according to analysis by Oil Change International and E3G. On the other hand, however, the USA, Italy and Germany have continued funding international fossil fuel projects in 2023 in breach of the pledge. They were supposed to stop funding foreign fossil fuels by December 2022. But since then, they collectively approved over $3 billion in financial support to oil and gas overseas programmes. Most of the funding comes in the form of state-backed guarantees provided by export credit agencies. These products limit the risk taken by companies selling services and goods in other countries, influencing investment.

(Times Live, Johannesberg, 17 November 2023) Banks and other financiers should withdraw their support of TotalEnergies’ $20 billion liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal in Mozambique, environmental lobby groups urged in a letter sent to more than two dozen project funders on Friday. The letter, seen by Reuters, comes at a crucial juncture for the French energy company as it prepares to relaunch Africa’s largest foreign direct investment project. Activists warn the project may worsen climate change and fuel human rights abuses in the impoverished southern African nation. “As a critical financial supporter of the project, you bear a direct and important responsibility in its dreadful impacts,” the letter, supported by more than 100 organisations, including ActionAid International and Greenpeace France, said. Last month, lawmakers in the Netherlands said they would insist on being consulted on safety and human rights concerns before they can approve a 1 billion euro ($1.06 billion) loan guarantee for the project, stalled since April 2021. TotalEnergies said before Friday’s letter that arrangements for project finance remain in place despite a ‘force majeure’ halt in 2021 when Islamist militants threatened the project site. Financing agreements for the project were struck in 2020 with direct and covered loans from eight export credit agencies, 19 commercial banks and the African Development Bank (AfDB).

(Business Wire, San Francisco, 9 October 2023) Ras Laffan Petrochemicals, a joint venture company owned 30% by Chevron Phillips Chemical and 70% by QatarEnergy, today announced that it has secured $4.4 billion to finance an integrated polymers facility to be located in Ras Laffan Industrial City, Qatar. The project financing comprises commercial and Islamic lenders and a group of export credit agencies. Finalizing the financing is a key milestone in the development of the 435-acre petrochemical project, which will include the largest ethane cracker in the Middle East and one of the largest in the world. The two companies also are constructing a joint venture integrated polymers facility on the Texas Gulf Coast, which is expected to be operational in 2026.  [No information is available on which ECAs are involved.]

(Global Trade Review, London, 4 October 2023) The African Export-Import Bank has agreed a US$300mn facility with Trident OGX Congo to bump up crude oil production in the Republic of the Congo. Other export credit agencies (ECAs) around the world have come under fire for continuing to finance the oil industry, most prominently the ECAs of western countries whose governments signed up to end international fossil fuel financing for new oil and gas projects. But some claim that global efforts to drastically scale back oil and gas production disadvantages African nations that have not yet reaped the economic benefits of fossil fuels, a tension borne out in the struggle over financing the East African crude oil pipeline. While western economies have had years to prepare for ESG requirements, Gwen Mwaba, director and global head of trade finance at Afreximbank, said that there was now “an expectation for Africa to fall in line immediately, when the reality is that we also need time to find our way on this journey. We should be given that space given how little we contribute to carbon emissions as a continent compared to the western world,” she said.