During his three-year tenure as Japan’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida’s created the Asia Zero Emission Community (AZEC) to, in his words, “help Asia decarbonise together”.
But a year and a half after AZEC was formally launched, a new report by the international research organization Zero Carbon Analytics shows that one-third of agreements between Japan and AZEC member countries promote or prolong fossil fuels.
Of the 158 projects financed by Japan under this initiative, 56 include fossil fuel technologies such as natural gas, co-firing ammonia with fossil fuel in power plants, hydrogen produced with fossil fuels, carbon capture and storage (CCS), and e-fuels.
A report by Zero Carbon Analytics shows the projects signed under the AZEC initiative leave renewable energy on the sidelines and favour technologies that promote or prolong fossil fuels. (Photo: Zero Carbon Analytics)
The alleged climate benefits of these technologies are hotly disputed. While some studies have claimed gas is a less polluting fossil fuel than the coal used for electricity in much of Southeast Asia, a study published last week suggested that it can actually be more polluting, especially when it is imported across the sea in a liquid form called LNG.
Ammonia co-firing involves burning ammonia alongside coal in coal-fired power plants. While this reduces the amount of coal burned, critics note that the plants still burn mostly coal and that the co-firing can encourage governments to allow the coal-fired power plant to keep operating longer. Similarly, carbon capture and storage technology captures just some of a power plant’s emissions and can encourage the authorities to keep the plant open longer.
Ammonia, hydrogen and e-fuels are all fuels which can be made in more polluting ways using fossil fuels or cleaner ways with renewable electricity.
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AZEC was launched in 2023 to advance climate cooperation in Asia, with Japan playing a central role. Kishida likened it to an Asian version of the European Coal and Steel Community – a predecessor to the European Union. Members include most countries in Southeast Asia and Australia.
But Japan’s fossil fuel investments – particularly gas projects – through AZEC are inconsistent with its pledge to stop overseas financing for unabated fossil fuels, experts told Climate Home News.
At their 2022 meeting in Berlin, G7 leaders all agreed to “end new direct public support for the international unabated fossil fuel energy sector by the end of 2022, except in limited circumstances clearly defined by each country that are consistent with a 1.5 °C warming limit and the goals of the Paris Agreement”.
Report author Amy Kong said: “Relying on these technologies is a slower and more expensive path to decarbonisation for the region, and risks derailing national power sector emissions targets set out in the International Energy Agency’s 2050 net zero scenario.”
Shigeru Ishiba, Japan’s recently appointed prime minister, has suggested the country will prioritise regional cooperation and has argued in favour of renewable energy. However, there is still little information on the future of AZEC under his new government.
Zero emissions community
Japan’s goal with the AZEC initiative was to invest public funds from its climate transition bonds to “create a huge new decarbonisation market in Asia”, former PM Kishida said during the community’s launch.
Through AZEC, member countries could apply for Japanese funding for energy projects. More than 150 projects have been approved between the Japanese government or government-backed institutions and their AZEC counterparts, the Zero Carbon Analytics report shows.
Initial investments were administered via a host of Japan’s government-backed institutions, including the environment and the trade ministries. Many of Japan’s private-sector firms have also partnered with these public entities.
But according to Zero Carbon Analytics’ analysis, over one-third of those MOUs will promote fossil fuels or technologies that will prolong the use of fossil fuels. This threatens to lock-in coal and gas investments that may be difficult to reverse, the report says.
On the other hand, 54 MOUs signed under AZEC include renewables and electrification technologies, about a third of the total. These include solar PV power, wind, hydroelectric, geothermal, battery storage, electric vehicles, green hydrogen and ammonia, and waste management. But of these 54 agreements, only 11 include wind and solar.
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‘False solutions’
Non-governmental organizations across Asia have raised concerns that AZEC primarily promotes fossil-based technologies.
Ayumi Fukakusa, deputy executive director of Friends of the Earth Japan, told Climate Home that technologies like CCS, ammonia and biomass co-firing and LNG “only delay climate actions and prolong the life of fossil fuel infrastructure”. She added that “AZEC will further lock-in Asian partners in massive emissions and doesn’t support real decarbonization”.
Hanna Hakko, Japan-based senior associate of the E3G think tank argued that Japan’s AZEC initiative would “serve the region far better by enabling the growth of renewable energy”, which would make the country more energy independent and contribute to long-term emissions reductions.
Wicaksono Gitawan is an Energy Transition Associate and Project Manager at Indonesian nonprofit CERAH. He called AZEC a form of “green colonialism.”
Japan’s push for ammonia co-firing has also been criticized by other governments, most prominently by Canadian, UK, and German ministers during the 2023 G7 meeting.
‘Green colonialism’
Japan signed by far the most deals with the region’s most populous nation Indonesia, followed by Thailand and Malaysia. Historically, Japan has been the top source of infrastructure investment in Southeast Asia and spearheaded the creation of an Asian LNG market in the 1960s.
Japan’s government-backed financial institutions, such as the Japan Bank for International Cooperation, invested $93 billion in overseas oil and gas projects between 2013 and 2023. About $42 billion of that was in fossil fuels projects in Asiawhile just $9 billion was spent on clean energy over the same period.
Campaigners say the long-term financial benefits of AZEC are questionable. Fukakusa from Friends of Earth Japan said “most of the support made by the Japanese government in the past, especially for energy projects, are through loans,” which risk adding pressure on already debt-burdened economies in Southeast Asia.
According to a Wood Mackenzie analysis, the cost of electricity from utility-scale solar PV in Asia declined significantly over the last few years, while the costs of coal and gas generation increased. In 2023, renewables were 13% cheaper than conventional coal in Asia and are expected to be 32% cheaper by 2030.
(Reporting by Walter James, editing by Sebastian Rodriguez and Joe Lo)
The post Japan backs fossil fuels in Southeast Asian “zero emission” initiative appeared first on Climate Home News.
Japan backs fossil fuels in Southeast Asian “zero emission” initiative
Governments at the COP17 nature summit in Armenia agreed on Saturday to scale up their policies to protect the planet’s shrinking biodiversity, and for the first time invited large emerging economies like China and Gulf states to take on donor responsibilities to help fund those efforts.
For the past two weeks, countries held talks in Yerevan under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity to outline a plan to ramp up currently “insufficient” policies to conserve land and marine ecosystems. A recent UN progress report found the world is off track to meet 22 out of 23 global targets aimed at reversing species loss and protecting 30% of land and seas by 2030.
While a response plan, called the “Global Review of Collective Progress”, was expected to be the main outcome of COP17, negotiations struggled to advance amid a deadlock over the controversial subject of how to finance the boost in conservation measures needed.
After an all-night session on Friday, delegates agreed to invite developing countries to voluntarily signal their interest in assuming donor funding obligations alongside developed nations. Negotiators repeatedly warned that any stronger provisions on expanding the donor base would collapse the deal.
COP president: Results beat expectations
An exhausted COP17 president Hambardzum Matevosyan, Armenia’s environment minister, told journalists in the early hours of Saturday that “we’ve achieved more than we could’ve expected” given the “importance” of the decisions being taken.
“It was 100% possible that those items did not made it through. 100% possible,” he said, adding that the conference had made progress on “all the most important items”.
Speaking at the closing plenary, the group of Pacific Islands said that, while the summit had achieved “great outcomes”, delegates are also departing Yerevan “with realities not reflected in the official text”, such as the low replenishment of the Global Environment Facility (GEF), a key funder of nature projects.
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Some observers also said the deal did not go far enough. Steven Guilbeault, a former Canadian environment minister who helped broker the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), said the Yerevan package of action is “an important step forward”, but still “falls short of what is needed to meet our 2030 commitments”.
An Lambrechts, biodiversity politics expert at Greenpeace International, said COP17 had kept things moving forward and set well-intentioned promises, but added that these “won’t remove major roadblocks to implementation” such as insufficient finance and debt constraints in developing countries.
WWF chief conservation officer Daudi Sumba noted that financial issues were not fully resolved. Despite the deal in Yerevan, “I fear finance will remain the key issue that continues to haunt the UN biodiversity summits,” he said in a statement.
‘Yerevan Pathway’ tackles nature plans and subsidies
In the lead-up to the summit, the UN assessment report showed countries are falling short on virtually all targets in the GBF, the 2022 global deal often referred to as the ‘Paris Agreement for nature’.
They include a landmark target to protect at least 30% of the planet’s land and sea by 2030. If countries all stick to their current national goals, about 26% of land would be protected and only about 12% of marine ecosystems would be under conservation measures.
The main COP17 decision – named the Yerevan Pathway by the presidency – calls for countries to revise their biodiversity plans, subject to available funding, with a particular focus on addressing the gap in coverage of “marine, coastal and inland water ecosystems”.
It also urges the over 60 countries who have not submitted a biodiversity plan yet to finalise them “as soon as possible” and taking into account the gaps identified by the UN progress report.
Countries also agreed to tackle the drivers of biodiversity loss by “accelerating” the reduction of subsidies for activities that damage nature. Subsidy reform, covered by Target 18 of the GBF, is where countries have made the least progress so far, according to the assessment report.
Jill Hepp, director of nature and marine policy and incentives at green group Conservation International, said singling out subsidies in the Yerevan Pathway “gives a strong signal” that closing the gap for biodiversity action requires “more urgent efforts to reform harmful incentives and scale up positive incentives”.
“Timid” steps to expand base of donors
Having failed to meet a target to channel $20 billion for biodiversity conservation by 2025 and faced with shrinking aid budgets, the EU pushed a proposal to expand the list of which countries count as donors, so that wealthy emerging economies like China and Saudi Arabia could also voluntarily contribute. The group of Arab nations strongly opposed this.
During the talks, Irish minister of state for nature, Christopher O’Sullivan, whose country holds the EU presidency, said the bloc wanted the world’s “new realities” to be reflected in the donor list.
Negotiations remained gridlocked for most of the two-week talks, until a last-day compromise was struck to invite developing countries that may want donor status “to indicate to the [Convention on Biological Diversity] secretariat their interest in being included in the corresponding list”.
Countries also asked the secretariat to send an invitation to emerging economies wanting donor status at each subsequent COP, and requested a technical report on “the implications of inclusion in the list” for emerging economies.
Swiss lead negotiator Gabriela Blatter said during one of the sessions that her country had expected greater steps towards expanding the base of contributing countries, but added that “if we’re mutually unhappy, it’s probably the closest we can get on these very delicate political compromises”. Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, also noted their dissatisfaction but said it had expected “a lot less”.
The fragile deal was approved in a package of decisions together with the Global Review, after some delegations including Brazil and China appealed to the plenary not to make further changes to the text at the risk of collapsing the whole agreement.
In a statement delivered to the closing plenary, the EU said the finance outcome had delivered “timid” progress towards fully broadening the base of donors.
Cali Fund still not operational
Adopted two years ago at COP16, the Cali Fund was seen by some observers as a way to channel private-sector finance into biodiversity conservation, as governments struggle to find public funds. But it is still struggling to get up on its feet.
The fund allows big corporations to access certificates for the use of genetic material found in biodiversity in return for a financial contribution, which experts estimate has the potential to raise up to $6.9bn for biodiversity. While voluntary, companies are encouraged to pay 1% of their profits or 0.1% of revenue into the fund.
But since its creation, the fund has received little more than $10,000, which Guilbeault argued is because the rules for disbursements to local communities and the operation of the fund had yet to be fleshed out. This was due to happen at COP17.
Yet, while the final decision on the fund laid out some of the rules – including how companies can earn “Cali Fund certificates” – some key technical details were left to the next COP in 2028 in Ecuador. This includes the issue of whether companies can pay a lower rate if they use genetic data for only a small portion of their products.
“By punting essential decisions to two years from now, parties have all but ensured the fund remains empty until then,” said Pakhi Das, a public policy advisor at NGO Plant-for-the-Planet.
The post COP17 delivers fragile deal to boost conservation and funding for nature appeared first on Climate Home News.
COP17 delivers fragile deal to boost conservation and funding for nature
SYDNEY, Thursday 30 October 2026 — In response to reports that the Albanese government is set to introduce draft legislation this year that would seek to ban data centres in Australia’s suburbs, Joe Rafalowicz, Head of Climate and Energy at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said:
“These reports are a testament to the growing community opposition to these completely inappropriate AI factories that have sprung up across our suburbs, and Big Tech corporations should take heed — the data centre build-out must not happen without the endorsement of the Australian people.
“But the government can’t simply ship this problem out to regional Australia without addressing the fundamental issues with this extractive new industry.
“We’re already seeing a trend of AI data centre proposals moving to the regions, in areas that are more water-scarce, more environmentally sensitive, and next to sources of fracked and coal seam gas to support their massive BYO gas-fired power plans — a pattern we’ve seen play out in the United States.
“From the Beetaloo Basin in the NT to the Western Downs in Qld, we’re seeing a wave of AI data centre proposals that would see new gas fast-tracked to support their massive energy demand, and threaten to completely derail Australia’s energy transition.
“Just as suburban Australians are asking, “what for?”, regional communities like Berry Springs and Dalby do not want dirty data centres setting up shop with absolutely no benefit to their communities. Greenpeace is calling for a moratorium on AI data centre developments until strict and enforceable safeguards are in place to protect our climate and our communities.”
-ENDS-
Media contact
Kate O’Callaghan on +61 406 231 892 or kate.ocallaghan@greenpeace.org
AI data centre ban in suburbs would not address fundamental issues: Greenpeace
In the thick of the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan in 2024, the UN climate talks were rattled by what can only be described as a major PR disaster. The BBC, Reuters and The Guardian all carried headlines, attributed to leading climate policy experts, that the COPs were “no longer fit for purpose”.
The articles outlined a series of reforms called for in an open letter signed by 22 eminent scientists and politicians, including a former UN secretary-general and previous UN climate chief, with a further 150 lending their support. The headlines shook confidence in the COP process, just as governments were wrestling over a new climate finance goal.
The Club of Rome – which handled the media relations for the letter – hurried to say that its “constructive, supportive ideas” had been “misinterpreted”. Negotiators kept calm(ish) and carried on, in the end landing the finance goal after some high-stakes drama on the final day.
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To my surprise, when I went back this week to read the letter again, I could not find the offending line about the COPs not being fit for purpose. The Club of Rome has yet to respond to my query about its disappearance.
Whatever happened to the wording, that sentiment has been widely shared. COPs have ballooned in size while the importance of their outcomes seems to have diminished since the 2015 Paris Agreement (with the exception of the 2023 COP in Dubai where countries agreed to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems).
The same on the surface
Two years on from those painful headlines in Baku, has anything changed for the better? You might be forgiven for thinking not. Official decisions are still made by consensus rather than the majority voting some have called for to stop blockers.
Tens of thousands of officials, activists and business execs still scurry around the halls to an ever-growing list of side events, roundtables and dialogues, while deals still come down to rows, all-nighters and jargon-filled texts adopted to rounds of applause.
But it would not be true to say that COPs have completely failed to respond to the very real need to translate the words of the Paris Agreement into action in the outside world.
Global warming is projected to be around 1.3C lower this century than it would have been if the world had not committed to tackle the climate crisis under that accord. Developing countries have a valued space at COPs in which their voices have equal weight in decision-making, unlike in many other international fora. And most importantly, perhaps, there has been a subtle shift, tipping the balance away from negotiating towards doing.
Brazil branded last year’s summit in Belém as the “COP of Implementation”, corralling the sprawling Action Agenda into six axes. This was a bid to impose some structure on the mushrooming efforts between governments, UN agencies, cities, businesses and civil society to set targets and spur faster results on their pet issues, from methane emissions to health and adaptation in conflict zones. COP30 alone saw the launch of 120 “plans to accelerate solutions”.
COP30 roadmaps off the cuff
Meanwhile, as the formal negotiations drew to a close, it was clear that consensus decision-making was evolving into something a little more improvised.
With only around half of all countries on board with the idea of a roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels, COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago announced his team would put one together over the coming year, along with another on how to meet a global goal to halt deforestation by 2030. Those roadmaps will be launched next week, presented and discussed at COP31, though it’s still unclear whether or how they’ll be incorporated into the formal negotiating agenda.