The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is meeting in Paris this week for its annual forum. On the negotiating table is a once-in-a-decade opportunity to end the flow of public money into fossil fuels, but you’d be forgiven for not knowing about it.
The OECD is made up of a group of primarily wealthy countries, who collectively set their own standards around big global issues like tax, trade and the environment.
Despite being one of the world’s most influential trade bodies, decisions at the OECD often happen behind closed doors.
Members say that this allows them to get on with “building better policies for better lives” without distraction.
The problem is that channelling billions of dollars of public money into fossil fuels each year doesn’t square with that aim.
The OECD regulates its members’ “export credit agencies”. These are government-owned institutions that provide loans, guarantees, credit and other forms of financial services – often at subsidised rates – to large infrastructure projects around the world.
Between 2018 and 2020, OECD export credit agencies (ECAs) also provided more international public finance for fossil fuels ($41 billion) than any other type of public finance institution, including multilateral development banks like the World Bank. They spent five times more on fossil fuels than renewable energy projects every year.
Too much LNG
Without ECA support, many new oil and gas projects would not go ahead. Over the last decade, these institutions have pumped over $80 billion into liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects, which receive the overwhelming majority of ECA support.
Projects include the Vaca Muerta gas pipeline in Argentina, a carbon bomb that threatens to release 50 billion tons of carbon dioxide over its lifetime; and $14 billion in loans and guarantees to a controversial LNG project in Mozambique. LNG is often cited as a bridge fuel in the clean energy transition, but the reality is the opposite. We already have more LNG infrastructure than we can use to stay within safe climate limits.
Australia’s bid to host climate talks is welcome but must be matched with action
Every dollar spent on new fossil fuels puts the brakes on our clean energy transition. To keep global temperature rise to within 1.5C – as per the Paris Agreement goal – the International Energy Agency is clear there is “no need“ for investment in new supplies of coal, oil and gas.
Under the Paris Agreement, all countries promised to “make financial flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development“, but the opaque governance structure of the OECD provides a loophole for oil and gas finance to keep flowing, via ECAs.
Public money
This isn’t a good way to spend public money. With peak demand for fossil fuels now expected as soon as 2030, any investment in new fossil fuel projects risks failing to deliver a return. Economists have estimated that around $1.4 trillion in oil and gas assets are at risk of becoming stranded.
Far from delivering energy security, public investment in fossil fuels exposes us to huge economic risks, whereas channeling this money into clean energy could open up new economic opportunities. Every dollar of investment in renewables creates three times more jobs than investment in fossil fuels.
Poll after poll shows that voters in OECD countries don’t want their money going into fossil fuels either. Almost two thirds of British and Canadian voters want their governments to stop subsidising fossil fuels.
In the United States there’s majority bipartisan support for ending fossil fuel subsidies.
Using public money to prop up a twilight industry isn’t in the public interest – it makes us all worse off.
At the Glasgow climate conference, Cop26, a majority of OECD member countries committed to ending public fossil finance for the unabated fossil fuel energy sector by the end of 2022, including by driving multilateral negotiations through the OECD.
Backtracking
Despite this, some OECD countries have backtracked on their commitment. Research from Oil Change International shows that since 2021, the United States, Germany, Italy and Japan have approved at least $5.2 billion in new public finance for international fossil fuel projects.
Avoid our mistake: Don’t let World Bank host loss and damage fund
This year alone, the US, via its ECA, the United States Export-Import Bank (EXIM), provided $740 million to oil and gas projects around the world. If President Joe Biden is to become the climate leader he wants to be, there is clearly much more to do.
OECD members already signalled the beginning of the end for public fossil fuel finance, by ending ECA support to coal-fired power in 2021.
The UK, EU and Canada proposals on the table represent a rare moment of leadership that must help set the stage for forging agreement on a global phase-out of fossil fuels at the upcoming climate conference in the United Arab Emirates.
They must not be shut down and strung out by OECD members still clutching onto fossil fuels such as Japan, South Korea and the United States.
Countries should use this week’s meeting to reform export credit agencies for good, so they catalyse the clean energy transition and preserve our planet, rather than destabilise it.
Sandrine Dixson-Declève is the co-president of The Club of Rome and co-lead of the Earth4All initiative
The post The OECD must take its chance to stop funding oil and gas appeared first on Climate Home News.
https://www.climatechangenews.com/2023/11/06/the-oecd-must-take-its-chance-to-stop-funding-fossil-fuels/
Climate Change
After a week of plenty of activity and drama for Greenpeace at sea, I felt like writing to you on a much quieter theme…
Do you have a favourite book, poem or story about the ocean?
When I was very small, it was the TimeLife book of The Fishes, by F. D. Ommanney, which I remember endlessly poring over, my child’s mind gripped, in total fascination. The cover illustration showed a shoal of barracuda, mid-water and heading upwards, lit up as an iridescent blue by a column of sunlight. Oddly, it is only the cover and the illustrations of the deep sea creatures which I now remember—but I loved that book, as the weakened spine, blunted pages and dog-eared corners attested.
The Fishes has been on my mind recently, because I’ve been working with some dear friends on our own illustrated oceans book, to be published by Upswell Publishing. The book is called Scott Reef: Like Nowhere Else on Earth, and I want to share with you a bit of the story behind its creation.
Scott Reef is absolutely magnificent: Australia’s largest freestanding oceanic reef, brimming with life, including rare and threatened species such as a genetically distinct population of green sea turtles, pygmy blue whales and the wonderfully elegant dusky sea snake. But Scott Reef isn’t near our capital cities; it is way off the north-west coast of WA. And it is threatened with devastation by Woodside, which wants to drill up to 57 toxic wells at the Reef for its vast, dirty Browse gas project.
One of the main challenges in the fight to save Scott Reef from being turned into an industrialised gas zone by Woodside is bringing this incredible location to life for people who haven’t actually experienced it first hand. Because despite its ecological significance and dazzling beauty, ‘Scott Reef’ is also—at least not yet—exactly a household name.
To help get over this barrier, Greenpeace has enabled a number of photographers to travel to Scott Reef by boat (including the Rainbow Warrior) to document its astonishing diversity of colour and life. We then brought these images together in a remarkable photobook, produced by our talented in-house team, which we’ve been putting into the hands of as many leaders as possible—including the MPs whose decisions can determine the Reef’s future.
Back in June this year, I was sharing a copy of our in-house book at a business gathering in Perth when someone pulled me aside. Had we thought about publishing the book commercially? Apart from anything else, he wanted to buy a copy himself! He had a point. We were proud of what we’d created, but a commercially published version could reach a much wider audience and have even greater campaign impact. I immediately turned to my dear friend, Terri-ann White, who runs Upswell Publishing in WA, for advice.
Terri-ann has a huge heart and terrific vision. So many wonderful things in WA owe their existence to her doings, and, true to form, she was immediately encouraging and enthusiastic. “But,” she said, “it would add a whole new dimension if we had some words to accompany the incredible pictures.”
Fair enough, I thought. I could ask a few authors.
“And when would you like it published?” she asked.
“Ideally November,” I answered sheepishly.
Now, in publishing terms, nobody goes from idea to finished work, beautifully produced by a commercial publisher, in just four months. It. Just. Doesn’t. Happen. A book of this scale would ordinarily take nine months, I was told. But Terri-ann was undeterred. “If you can get a rapid turnaround on the writing, I will give it a shot.”
Over the following few days, I sent out 24 emails to prospective writers. To my joy and surprise 23 of them responded almost immediately with an enthusiastic yes!
Terri-ann was somewhat alarmed and perplexed when I told her the good news… we’d discussed a few authors, not more than twenty! “Impossible,” she texted. “Editing is important and you are talking about thousands of words!” But I also know Terri-ann. She does the impossible. And so, here we are… Terri-ann is going to hit that improbable deadline. Scott Reef: Like Nowhere Else on Earth will be on shelves in November.
The contributors are a wonderfully diverse bunch, united by their enthusiasm for Scott Reef — and their extraordinary speed!
It’s a brilliant mix. The book brings together national icons like Peter Garrett, Tim Winton, Mick Dodson, Janet Holmes à Court and Fiona Stanley; the intellectual heft of professors Frank Bongiorno, Jessica Meeuwig, Rick Steiner and Samantha Hepburn; the poetic vision of Prema Arasu, Berndt Sellheim and Saadiah Freeman; the field expertise and passionate first hand witnessing of Imogen Zethoven, Tooni Mahto, Ben Fitzpatrick, Geoff Bice, Olaf Meynecke, Paul Gamblin, Sarah Gittoes and Hayley Baillie; and the determination of emerging activist voices Jackson Reid and Emma Sangalli.
Their elegant words wrap themselves around the sheer wonder of the underwater world, brought to life by the work of the photographers — of whom one, Wendy Mitchell, has also contributed a wonderful essay.
Terri-ann showed me the full physical proofs this week and they are breathtaking. This book contains some of my absolute favourite images of wildlife beneath the waves -– and believe me, after almost 20 years at Greenpeace, I’ve been privileged enough to see some remarkable shots! The essays bring a whole new depth and richness to the story of Scott Reef.
If I am being honest, and maybe a bit sentimental, I hope that a four or five-year-old child somewhere in Australia will spend part of their summer holidays turning the pages of this book, wide-eyed with curiosity and awe at the beauty and strangeness of the creatures that call our oceans home.
Our shared commitment is to make sure that, as those children grow up, the wonders of Scott Reef will exist not just in the pages of the book, but out there in the wild waters off north-western Australia—alive, thriving, and every bit as extraordinary as they are today; a living wonder beneath the waves.
Pre-orders of Scott Reef: Like Nowhere Else on Earth are available here.
Q & A
Sometimes you get asked a question so often that you decide to produce a report to answer it!
We know there is strong public opposition to voter opposition to gas drilling at Scott Reef and fracking in the Kimberley in Western Australia. But I am frequently asked whether, even if people don’t want it, more gas drilling is a necessary evil to sustain WA’s prosperity?
The short answer is an unequivocal ‘No’. The longer answer is our new report, From Gas to Green: Building Western Australia’s Future State, which makes the comprehensive case that Asia’s gas market is declining — while WA has an enormous untapped opportunity to become a global leader in green industries and exports, helping drive the region’s shift away from fossil fuels. The faster that WA embarks on a decisive shift away from gas—and that includes no fracking in the Kimberley, or drilling at Scott Reef — so much the better for the state’s people, ecology and economy.
For the first time, new-energy vehicles (NEVs) made up 67% of new car sales in China in September, according to the latest data from the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA).
The figures show that NEVs, which include battery electric cars and plug-in hybrids, captured a record share of sales, even though fewer were sold than last year.
This is because sales of combustion-engine cars are falling steeply, a trend that the CPCA has attributed to rising petrol prices following the start of the Hormuz crisis.
Indeed, sales of fuel-only cars were down 31% year-on-year in the first nine months of 2026, with plug-in hybrid sales down 26% – whereas battery EV sales were only down 4%.
One analyst tells Carbon Brief that China’s rapidly growing EV fleet has offset demand for 143m barrels of oil since the start of the Hormuz crisis.
Another says that the crisis is “reinforcing China’s electrification of road transport”.
Meanwhile, amid slowing domestic sales, Chinese carmakers’ exports of NEVs more than doubled [in 2026 to date / in September] from a year earlier.
NEV record
A record two out of every three cars sold in September in China were NEVs, according to CPCA data, as shown in the figure below.
(NEVs predominantly include battery electric vehicles – BEVs – and plug-in hybrids – PHEVs. BEVs only run on electricity, whereas PHEVs also have a combustion engine.)
This marks a rapid rise for NEVs from just 6% of new car sales in 2020 up to 58% in 2026 to date – and a record 67% in the month of September.
This year, NEVs’ share of sales has also bounced back from a low of 39% in January, after the full purchase tax exemption that had been in place for more than a decade came to an end in December 2025.
The gain in NEV share in 2026 has come amid a slowdown across the wider domestic passenger-car market, which has hit sales of combustion-engine vehicles particularly hard.
This September, passenger-car retail sales across all categories declined, with overall sales volumes falling 28% year-on-year.
The contraction was led by combustion-engine vehicles, which saw sales fall 43% year-on-year in September and 31% in 2026 to date.
However, sales of PHEVs also fell by 36% year-on-year in September and by 26% in 2026 to date. By comparison, BEVs performed better, although sales still declined 8.5% from a year earlier in September and 4% in 2026 to date.
As a result, NEV sales overall fell by 17% in September and 13% in 2026 to date.
While the market changes in 2026 to date were particularly dramatic, they reflect a broad continuation of trends seen over the past decade.
Indeed, sales of combustion-engine cars in China peaked in 2017 and they have been declining ever since, shown in the figure below.
Impact of Hormuz
Part of the reason for the advance of NEVs in 2026, said Chinese technology news outlet OFweek, was petrol cars “giving up market share” as they were outperformed by electric alternatives.
Cui Dongshu, secretary-general of the CPCA, cited higher petrol prices as an explanation for September’s weak combustion-car sales, in comments to financial news outlet National Business Daily.
Imports of oil into China in January-September have fallen 15% compared to 2025, equivalent to 470m barrels, as ongoing conflict tightened supply and drove up prices.
China’s passenger-car NEV fleet has displaced 143m barrels of oil so far during the strait of Hormuz crisis, Euan Graham, senior energy analyst at thinktank Ember, tells Carbon Brief.
EVs “accounted for 12% of the decrease in China’s oil use post-Hormuz”, according to an estimate provided to thinktank the Brookings Institute by an unnamed analyst.