Bemnet Agata is a communications officer at the Tax Justice Network, where Alison Schultz is a research fellow.

We are entering an age of permanent volatility.

Climate change is making extreme weather more destructive. Geopolitical tensions are disrupting energy markets and supply chains. Governments are expected not only to decarbonise their economies, but to protect them against an increasingly unpredictable world. That requires sustained public investment at precisely the moment repeated shocks are placing ever greater pressure on public finances.

Governments are rightly debating how to mobilise the trillions needed for the energy transition. Yet one of the largest untapped sources of climate finance requires neither higher corporate tax rates nor new international funds. It lies in correcting one of the oldest assumptions underpinning the international corporate tax system.

One of the stranger features of the modern economy is that we no longer disagree about what a multinational corporation is—until the conversation turns to tax.

Investors value Apple as a single global business. Consumers experience it as a single company. Its executives manage it as an integrated enterprise, allocating capital, production and marketing across continents according to commercial strategy rather than national borders. Nobody seriously believes its subsidiaries are independent businesses negotiating with one another as though they were unrelated companies.

Yet this is precisely the legal fiction upon which the international corporate tax system was built—and continues to rest.

That legal fiction does more than misdescribe how multinational businesses operate. It enables profits to be shifted away from the places where real economic activity takes place and into jurisdictions where little or no tax is paid. This not only erodes public revenues, but also undermines the level playing field by giving multinational corporations tax advantages that purely domestic businesses cannot replicate.

$500 billion a year

Taxing multinational corporations as the integrated businesses they actually are could generate around $500 billion in additional corporate tax revenues every year. That’s almost 40% of the $1.3 trillion in annual climate finance that, two years ago, governments agreed should be mobilised by 2035. That is exactly what governments are negotiating this week under the United Nations Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation in New York.

Imagine Apple sold one million iPhones in Kenya. Few people would dispute that those sales depend on the Kenyan economy. Every iPhone arrives through Kenyan ports, travels on Kenyan roads, is sold by Kenyan workers, connects through Kenyan telecommunications infrastructure and is protected by Kenyan courts. Apple’s success depends not only on its own innovation, but on the public investments and institutions that make economic activity possible.

The negotiations underway under the United Nations Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation would replace this legal fiction with a system known as unitary taxation with formulary apportionment. Rather than allowing multinational corporations to pay tax where they say their profits arise, it would allocate taxing rights according to where they undertake genuine economic activity—where they employ workers, manufacture goods, provide services and sell to customers. It would replace today’s pay where you say model with one based on pay where you play

This is not about increasing corporate tax rates. It is about deciding where multinational corporations should pay tax on the profits they already earn. Allocating taxing rights in this way would benefit countries across the income spectrum. While higher-income countries would gain the most in absolute terms, lower-income countries would see the largest proportional increases.

France, for example, would collect an additional US$25.5 billion each year, while Kenya would increase its corporate tax revenues by 406%. At a time of mounting climate costs, those revenues could help governments drive the transition to clean energy while investing in the resilience needed to withstand future shocks.

An overdue correction

The strongest argument for reform, however, is not the scale of the projected revenue gains. It is that the proposal corrects a century-old foundational error by bringing international tax rules into closer alignment with how the modern economy actually works.

Every successful market depends on foundations that no company creates alone: public investment, functioning institutions and the participation of millions of workers and consumers. If multinational profits are generated collectively across many countries, the rules governing where those profits are taxed should recognise that reality rather than the legal and accounting artifices that determine where profits appear on paper.

The international tax system remains an outlier. Every other area of economic governance has long since recognised multinational corporations as integrated global businesses. Tax rules remain the last custodian of the legal fiction that multinational corporations are not, in fact, multinational.

The debate taking place in New York is therefore about much more than tax. It is about whether the rules underpinning the global economy still reflect the economy they are meant to govern—and whether they equip governments with the fiscal capacity to confront the defining challenges of the twenty-first century.

Energy sovereignty without fiscal sovereignty is an unfinished transition. Countries cannot build a more secure and resilient future if the wealth generated within their economies continues to escape taxation where it is created.

Recovering those revenues would strengthen public finances, giving governments not only the resources to accelerate the energy transition but also the fiscal capacity to plan, coordinate and sustain it over the long term. In an age of permanent volatility, that capacity may prove to be every country’s most important climate adaptation strategy.

The post A legal fiction blocking billions in climate finance will be challenged this week appeared first on Climate Home News.

A legal fiction blocking billions in climate finance will be challenged this week

Leaders of the Santa Marta coalition – a group of governments, businesses and civil society organisations seeking to transition away from fossil fuels – hope it can withstand the loss of one of its founding members as a far-right, pro-fossil fuel government takes office in Colombia this week.

In April, Colombia hosted 57 governments in the Caribbean city of Santa Marta for the first conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels – a voluntary meeting outside of official UN climate talks. In June, far-right candidate Abelardo de la Espriella won a general election, and is set to take office on Friday.

De la Espriella has pledged to ramp up coal exports and begin fracking for methane gas, reversing a ban on all new hydrocarbon exploration enacted by the current government of Gustavo Petro since 2022. The soon to be environment minister Fabio Arjona said the Santa Marta conference was an “absolute waste of time and money”.

He will replace Irene Vélez Torres, who co-chairs the Santa Marta coalition. Torres told a press briefing last week that the initiative was created in a way that made sure “it could live without Colombia because we knew [a change in government] was a risk”.

“It’s a coalition of countries but also subnational governments, civil society, scientists… so there is a lot more than just Colombia. It’s a shame that Colombia cannot continue with its international leadership, but it doesn’t mean that what we created as a global legacy will not continue,” she said.

Dutch environment minister Stientje van Veldhoven, also a co-chair in the initiative, told Climate Home News in a statement that “the organization is set-up in a way that progress does not depend on one or two countries”, and highlighted the role of incoming co-chairs Ireland and Tuvalu.

The new co-chairs will officially take the lead after COP31 and are set to host the second Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels in Tuvalu next year. Van Veldhoven said the two countries are already involved in preparing for this transition.

Priorities: roadmaps, debt and trade

After meeting in Santa Marta to kickstart work on phasing out fossil fuels, governments agreed to focus on three priorities: developing national roadmaps to phase out fossil fuels, decoupling trade from coal, oil and gas, and reducing global finance’s dependence on fossil fuels.

At last year’s COP30, a group of around 80 countries led a failed push for the UN to adopt a global roadmap to phase out fossil fuels. To keep talks from collapsing, Brazil proposed to draft a voluntary roadmap instead, which has received suggestions from dozens of countries.

In June, Vélez Torres told journalists that Colombia and the Netherlands would seek for COP31 to reflect the work of the Santa Marta coalition, something the co-presidency of Türkiye and Australia was “open” to consider, she added.

Last week, she stressed that the workstreams are also set up independently from the Dutch and Colombian governments, and that each area of focus will have its own “madrina”, which translates as “godmother”, a contact point that will oversee progress and support countries.

Van Veldhoven noted that, while the coalition is open to new members, the current priority is “setting up the organisation with the current involved countries and stakeholders”. The Dutch government noted that “several countries” have expressed interest, but could not disclosed which ones.

Colombia’s fossil fuel shift

While the coalition is set up to withstand changes in government, Colombia’s shift to a pro-fossil fuel government represents an important blow to global initiatives seeking to phase out fossil fuels, said Andreas Malm, author and professor of human ecology at Lund University.

“The gap that we have after this defeat is charismatic political leadership that makes the necessary links and arguments on the global stage. For the moment, I don’t see who could replace Colombia in that role,” he said. “But who knows… perhaps some miracle will happen somewhere in the world and you will have someone to pick up that mantle that is now on the ground.”

Colombia not only leads the Santa Marta coalition, but is also one of the few fossil fuel producers in the group to actually halt new exploration licenses. Coal and oil derivatives account for about a third of the country’s exports, but both industries have followed a downward trend over the last decade.

De la Espriella’s government will also have to start from scratch, as Petro’s government halted all oil and gas exploration pilots in the key Magdalena and Cesar-Ranchería regions. Both areas are also home to indigenous communities who are likely to challenge any projects in court.

Vélez Torres said that halting all new coal, oil and gas exploration licenses “was not easy” and led to “violent reactions” from national elites, including “violent threats”, but that it came with the deep belief that “it is needed, it is urgent, and it cannot be delayed”.

At an international level, she added that more countries need to show “political bravery” to take similar decisions, and that the global discussion to phase out fossil fuels “cannot be delayed” because the time window for humanity to act is shrinking.

“We decided to go against the current. That has been one of the bravest decisions, and I hope that other governments and particularly civil society can get to lead that conversation forward”, she said.

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Santa Marta coalition tested as co-chair Colombia turns back to fossil fuels

When heavy storms triggered a fault on a major power line in Indonesia’s Sumatra in late May, blackouts plunged homes and businesses across the island into darkness, leaving millions to cope without power in the humid heat for up to a day.

Failed traffic lights caused chaos on the streets of Medan, one of the country’s biggest cities, and restaurants and shops had to shutter or throw out food after fridges stopped working. Four people were reported to have died from carbon monoxide poisoning from generators.

A power outage caused by damage to cables on a high-voltage transmission line, the first of two to strike Sumatra in a fortnight, highlighted the huge challenge facing Indonesia and much of neighbouring Southeast Asia – the maintenance and upgrading of inadequate grid capacity that industry analysts say is proving an obstacle for billions of dollars in planned clean power investments.

Experts told Climate Home News the Galang–Simangkuk transmission line, which was relatively new and only began operating seven years ago, should have been able to withstand the storms that caused transmission towers to collapse in early June.

“It should not have had these grid failures,” said Wai-Shin Chan, Hong Kong-based head of research at Asia Research & Engagement, a consulting firm, warning that climate change would bring more frequent episodes of extreme weather.

“The grid resilience is really not there,” Chan said.

The Indonesian Air Force helped state-owned utility PT Perusahaan Listrik Negara (PLN) transport emergency power towers to restore electricity supplies within 24 hours, but the two incidents could cause longer-lasting damage to investor confidence – hurting the delivery of much-needed reliable clean electricity supplies.

PLN did not respond to a request for comment.

Grid bottlenecks and projects stuck on hold

With electrification high on the agenda of the COP31 climate talks later this year, there is growing global focus on the need to bolster grid infrastructure to cope with increased electricity use and more renewables in the power mix.

In Southeast Asia, energy experts say inadequate grid capacity and maintenance is already proving a major factor in the region’s stuttering rollout of new clean energy projects.

About 50% to 60% of renewable energy projects in Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia were cancelled or stalled between 2021 and 2025, according to a recent report by consultancy Bain & Company and Standard Chartered. In Indonesia, 48% of announced projects were subsequently dropped or delayed during that period.

Progress in the region is also being hampered by issues ranging from unclear power purchase agreement (PPA) structures, a failure of power policies to keep up with investor needs, permitting and licensing approval delays, grid connection constraints, limits to private sector involvement in electricity markets, and policy and tariff uncertainty, energy experts said.

Some renewable energy projects have also faced opposition due to their environmental impact and issues related to land rights.

But Bain researchers found grid infrastructure was the biggest bottleneck for Southeast Asia’s energy transition, with about $18 billion per year needed in investment for modernisation and upgrades.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has warned that electricity grid and storage investment in the region was higher in 2015 at $15 billion compared with $12 billion in 2025, even as electricity demand and renewable energy growth accelerated.

“It’s a concern for long-term power development in the region,” Chan said.

“If these risks – grid curtailment, policy uncertainty, permitting and PPA – are not adequately addressed, investors just don’t have the confidence to hit the final investment decision button,” he added.

A stuttering energy transition

Ramping up progress on solar, wind, hydro and geothermal projects is vital for Southeast Asian nations to hit their targets on cutting planet-heating carbon emissions.

Indonesia has pledged to reduce emissions by 31.9% by 2030 compared with business-as-usual levels, or by 43.2% with international support, on the way to reaching net zero by 2060.

Renewables accounted for about 18% of Indonesia’s energy mix in April 2026 according to local media reports, falling short of the country’s initial 23% target for 2025, with the majority of its energy needs met by coal, oil and gas. In 2025, a new National Energy Policy postponed achieving the target to 2030.

“The region carries significant weight in global terms, given its share of world population and energy consumption,” said Joseph Jacobelli, an impact investor and author of Asia’s Energy Revolution and Powering the Unstoppable Green Shift.

“Every delay in renewable energy deployment extends dependence on fossil fuels and pushes net zero targets further out of reach,” he said.

There are cost benefits of increasing renewables in the overall power mix, too.

In many parts of the region, new renewable power – especially solar and onshore wind – is cheaper than building new fossil fuel generation. The global energy shock unleashed by the Iran war has highlighted the energy security benefits of renewables, though it also raised concerns about coal backsliding in countries including Indonesia.

Surging oil prices exposed Southeast Asia’s vulnerability to fossil fuel supply disruptions, causing energy prices to soar and widespread fuel shortages that led the World Bank to downgrade the region’s growth projection.

“This situation pushes us to accelerate [the energy transition], we must move faster,” Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto said in March, adding that the government was focused on solar projects that would deliver a total installed capacity of up to 100 GW.

At the same time, progress on moving away from coal has been sluggish. Both Indonesia and Vietnam signed up for Just Energy Transition Partnerships (JETPs) – a funding initiative set up by the G7 to help developing nations shift away from coal – though a lack of favourable financing is holding back these plans.

The US withdrew from its JETP deals with the two countries last year, reflecting President Donald Trump’s wider energy policies, and Indonesia abandoned plans to close a major coal power plant.

Lack of finance, or lack of faith?

But a shortage of financing to bring new renewables projects online is not the cause of foot-dragging in Indonesia, where installed solar capacity reached only about 20% to 30% of the government’s 2020-2025 target, Bain researchers said.

Of an estimated $540 billion in green capital expenditure announced across Southeast Asia’s power and electric vehicle value chains between now and 2030, only about $315 billion is on a credible path towards deployment under current conditions, according to the report.

Between 2022 and early 2026, more than a quarter of the 452 new solar projects announced in Southeast Asian countries were postponed or cancelled, according to Global Energy Monitor‘s Global Solar Power Tracker.

In Indonesia, the Batam Bintan Karimun solar farm was initially expected to come online by 2024 but was cancelled in 2023 for unknown reasons, Kasandra O’Malia, a project manager at Global Energy Monitor, told Climate Home. The project also included plans for Southeast Asia’s largest associated battery storage facility.

Another high-profile Indonesian development that has stalled is a 3,500 MW solar and storage project proposed on Riau Island to export clean electricity to Singapore. While not formally abandoned, there have been few updates to this project since April 2022.

“This execution gap is not really to do with money – there is available capital – but the finance is not being deployed effectively because the risks have not been adequately redressed,” Chan said.

In a bid to foster investor certainty, Indonesia’s government approved a new 2025-2034 Electricity Supply Business Plan (RUPTL) for PLN in May 2025, replacing years of delays over the country’s power development roadmap.

As well as aligning government policy, streamlining permitting, simplifying purchase procedures and targeting 70 GW of new generation, with renewables accounting for the vast majority of additions, the plan includes the construction of about 47,800 kilometres of new transmission lines and substations with a total capacity of 108,000 megavolt-ampere, spread across Indonesia.

The Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources, several domestic and international renewable energy developers, and the Indonesia Renewable Society, did not respond to requests for comment.

Another way to soothe investors’ nerves would be for governments to use public money to de-risk investments, but there is little appetite for this approach in the region, Chan said.

A more effective tool would be ensuring stable, investment-friendly energy market policies and regulations, said Alnie Demoral, a Manila-based energy analyst at climate think-tank Ember who previously worked with solar developers and investors.

Renewable energy developers, investors and authorities can spend years negotiating the project’s costs, permitting and whether grid connection will be available to bring clean power online, she said.

Often the longest discussions focus on the power pricing tariffs that governments set for renewable energy producers. Changing policies or disagreement on underlying cost assumptions can stall or delay a project before it reaches financial close, she added.

“Governments have to do their part by making sure the investment environment is stable,” Demoral said.

“But this is a two-way process. The private sector and developers must also ensure that their assessments of the project are based on robust assumptions.”

AI data centres add to the strain

At the same time, rapid growth in power-hungry AI data centres is putting extra strain on the region’s overstretched grids.

AI data centres, which use much more power than regular data centres, are becoming one of the largest drivers of new power demand in Southeast Asia as governments in the region jostle for more multibillion-dollar investment in the sector.

The slow pace of renewable energy deployment and grid modernisation, coupled with ongoing reliance on fossil fuels in the electricity mix, will make it difficult for the region to meet a new, fast-growing source of additional demand without increasing emissions.

Emissions from data centre power use in Indonesia are expected to quadruple between 2024 and 2030, according to Ember.

AI data centres operate around the clock and will often use any power that is available – be it renewables or fossil fuels, said Chan, urging policymakers to first ensure they can meet the power needs before courting data centres.

Many new AI data centres are planned for areas with insufficient high-voltage transmission capacity, according to the Bain report, suggesting that countries should focus on new high-voltage lines, larger substations and stronger interconnections between regions.

The researchers note that AI data centres also typically take about one to three years to build, while major electricity transmission lines and grid updates can take five years or more, adding that power grid investments must happen before renewable energy or AI projects.

“Growth in data centres and AI is already adding pressure to constrained grids,” said Christina Ng, the Kuala Lumpur-based co-founder of Energy Shift Institute, an Asia-focused, independent energy finance think-tank.

“The risk is that new demand is met through high-emitting electricity if clean power and clean grid investment do not keep pace.”

Main image: A technician walks next to solar panels that partially provide electrical power to the Grand Mosque of Istiqlal in Jakarta, Indonesia (Photo: REUTERS/Willy Kurniawan)

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Southeast Asia’s fragile grids threaten billions in clean energy investment