Today the International Energy Association (IEA) issued its seventh World Energy Investment (WEI) report, which includes an assessment of the adequacy of investment flows and commitments to meet the goal to limit the rise in global temperatures to 1.5°C. The report found that oil and gas investment is up 10% from last year, as well as coal investment. The report said, “today’s oil and gas spending is caught between two visions of the future: it is too high for a pathway aligned with limiting global warming to 1.5 °C but not enough to satisfy rising demand in a scenario where governments stick with today’s policy settings and fail to deliver on their climate pledges.”
The IEA marked a major milestone for climate justice and financial sustainability last year when it called for an immediate end to all financing of new fossil-fuel supply projects to slash net carbon emissions to zero by 2050. “Beyond projects already committed as of 2021, there are no new oil and gas fields approved for development in our pathway,” the IEA said.
Despite the IEA’s warning, banks have exploited loopholes in “net-zero” climate pledges to continue financing of coal and other fossil fuels in the near term.
Members of the Stop the Money Pipeline coalition released the following statements:
“Despite the IEA’s dire warning last year that called for an immediate end to new fossil fuel finance, their new report shows that financial institutions the world over are continuing to pour money into fossil fuel projects,” said Roshan Krishnan, Climate Finance Campaigner at Amazon Watch. “Global finance cannot be allowed to continue to heat the planet beyond habitability, violate the rights of Indigenous peoples and frontline communities, and demolish vital ecosystems like the Amazon rainforest. If these banks and asset managers refuse to stop funding climate, ecological, and humanitarian disasters, they must be made to.”
“Last year, the IEA warned that in order for the world to have even a fifty percent chance of constraining global warming to 1.5 degrees, all new fossil fuel investments must stop immediately,” said Arielle Swernoff, US Banks Campaign Manager at Stop the Money Pipeline. “Unfortunately, banks and the financial sector have, in defiance of science, human rights, and their own climate targets, continued to pour money into fossil fuels – and American banks are the worst of the bunch. Banks must immediately end their support for fossil fuel expansion. If they won’t, they’ll have blood on their hands.”
“When the world’s preeminent energy experts issued its dire warning last year calling for an immediate end to new fossil fuel finance, we hoped that financial institutions — which are supposedly committed to net zero — would act accordingly. Today’s findings from the International Energy Agency’s latest energy investment report demonstrate how increasingly out of touch the financial industry is with the reality of what’s needed to achieve its own climate commitments. As the climate crisis worsens, this report affirms how important it is for big US banks to immediately stop financing new fossil fuel expansion and accelerate investments in clean energy,” said Ben Cushing, campaign manager for the Sierra Club’s Fossil-Free Finance campaign.
