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From Africa to Southeast Asia, the Trump administration is cancelling US support for projects designed to replace coal, oil and gas with clean energy, pushing instead for the use of American taxpayers’ money to support planet-heating fossil fuels.
Since Donald Trump took office in January, he has scrapped energy transition partnerships with South Africa, Indonesia and Vietnam and is trying to halt US backing for the African Development Bank (AfDB) and multilateral Climate Investment Funds.
At the same time, his administration has ordered the US Export-Import Bank (EXIM) to start supporting coal power projects abroad and, seemingly with some success, is putting pressure on the World Bank to fund more fossil fuels.
Climate campaigners said these changes would foster dependence on coal, oil and gas in developing countries, worsening climate change and holding back economic development.
At energy security talks, US pushes gas and derides renewables
US cuts to South Africa’s JETP
Since 2021, a group of wealthy countries including the US have teamed up with the coal-reliant emerging economies of South Africa, Indonesia and Vietnam on Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) plans to swap coal for clean energy in a way that is fair to workers and communities.
But Trump’s administration has pulled out of these deals. In March, the rest of the rich nations involved issued a statement saying the US’s withdrawal from the South African partnership was “regrettable”.
It meant the US would no longer provide $56 million in grants, and the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) would not provide $1 billion in loans on commercial terms or equity investment to South African projects. Even projects already being implemented were cancelled, according to a South African foreign ministry spokesperson.
Coal-reliant South African provinces falling behind on just transition
Projects funded by other countries in the coal-reliant province of Mpumalanga include developing green hydrogen, energy-efficient homes, better electricity transmission and mapping areas suitable for wind turbines.Coal-reliant South African provinces falling behind on just transition
US contributions represented just under 10% of the total grants provided and a similar share of the total pledges. The other countries said they remain “fully committed” to the programme and “some partners are exploring possibilities for supporting work previously being carried out by the US”.
CIF coal transition programme on hold
As well as ending direct support, the US is also throwing a spanner in the works of $500 million due to be provided by the CIF, which works through multilateral development banks, and its Accelerating Coal Transition (ACT) programme for South Africa.
In 2022, South Africa asked the CIF for $450 million in loans and $50 million in grants under this programme to repurpose three aging coal-fired power plants in Mpumalanga, replace the electricity they generated with renewables, fund community projects in the province and make its buildings more energy-efficient.
The plan – approved that year by governments on the CIF committee that oversees this programme, including the US – was for this money to unlock around $2.1 billion more, mainly from development banks and the private sector.
But in July 2024, following elections and a change of environment minister in Pretoria, South Africa tried to change the investment plan to reflect state-owned utility Eskom’s decision to keep the three coal plants running – albeit below their full capacity – until 2030.
With the nation having suffered frequent planned blackouts due to a shortage of electricity supply, the government cited “energy security concerns” for the proposed change. Altering the plan meant it had to seek approval from this committee – the Clean Technology Fund’s Trust Fund – again.
By the time of the committee meeting in February 2025, with Trump now in the White House, the plan had still not been signed off by governments. The co-chair’s meeting summary shows that South Africa urged governments to give it the greenlight.
But in early March, the US prevented those funds from being approved, according to a Bloomberg news report. Two sources with knowledge of the discussions also told Climate Home that the US was holding back funding.
While the US under Trump has become hostile to phasing out fossil fuels in general, it has a particularly bad relationship with South Africa’s government, cancelling all “aid and assistance” in February due to Pretoria’s criticism of US ally Israel and US allegations of discrimination against South Africa’s white minority.
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The CIF committee next meets on June 11 in Washington, where the updated South African energy investment plan is due to be discussed, according to Bloomberg. A CIF spokesperson told Climate Home the agenda is “currently being finalised” and that deliberations related to the South African investment plan are “ongoing and not public”.
“A delay in funding means a delay in decarbonising the South African power sector,” said Tracy Ledger, head of just transition at the Johannesburg-based Public Affairs Research Institute.
Trump budget cuts to harm development
In the proposed US budget for 2026 – which has to be negotiated with Congress – the White House has proposed cutting $275 million of spending allocated to the CIF and the Global Environment Facility together, as well as taking $555 million away from the AfDB’s fund for Africa’s least developed countries because it is “not currently aligned to Administration priorities”.
Samuel Maimbo, a World Bank vice president who is bidding to lead the AfDB, said US cuts to the African Development Fund would have a “huge impact on Africa’s development”.
Even as it seeks to take money away from clean energy, the Trump administration has said it is willing to spend more public money supporting fossil fuel projects abroad – and has pressured international lenders like the World Bank to do the same, with some success.
EXIM backs coal projects
On the day he was inaugurated, Trump issued an executive order announcing he would withdraw from the Paris climate agreement and “revoked and rescinded immediately” former President Joe Biden’s international climate finance plan. He instructed the EXIM president at the time, Reta Jo Lewis, to report back in 30 days on how she had complied with this order.
On May 1, the board of directors of the bank – which provides loans and other support to US businesses to help them export their products – voted unanimously to reverse a ban on funding coal-fired power projects.
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According to Kate DeAngelis, deputy director of economic policy at Friends of the Earth US, who monitored the meeting online, the board’s acting chair James Cruse told those present that this move put EXIM in line with Trump’s executive order and that Cruse had supported it all along.
A bank spokesperson told Climate Home that the entire board agreed that these changes “put the Bank in alignment with charter and administration priorities”.
Asked whether, as DeAngelis claimed, the bank was quicker to heed Trump’s order to fund coal than Biden’s previous order to phase out support for fossil fuels, the spokesperson said that “as an independent agency, EXIM always works to align with the priorities of the current administration”, adding that it “is most wholly focused on ensuring [our] mission and charter mandates are upheld”.
Funding foreign coal makes the US an outlier internationally. In recent years, almost all major nations – including China – have promised to stop funding coal-fired power plants abroad, although some exceptions persist.
Oil Change International campaigner Laurie van der Burg said public funding was crucial for coal plant developers as these projects are now deemed too risky by private banks. She added that EXIM’s move was “concerning” but unlikely to reverse the global trend of coal finance dropping.
Push for World Bank to back gas
In April, meanwhile, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that the World Bank – which provides cheap loans and grants to developing countries – “must be tech neutral and prioritise affordability in energy investment”. “In most cases, this means investing in gas and other fossil fuel-based energy production,” he said.
Shortly before Bessent’s speech, World Bank President Ajay Banga told reporters he would seek approval from the bank’s board to enable more gas projects, which are currently only supported in limited circumstances. Customarily, the head of the World Bank is effectively chosen by the US president, with Bessent saying in April that Banga needed to earn the Trump administration’s trust.
Trump’s first 100 days: US walks away from global climate action
Fran Witt, who attended the bank’s spring meetings as part of her work with the NGO Recourse, told Climate Home that the bank should spend taxpayers’ money on playing “a leadership role in helping [energy] transition rather than fostering dependence on gas”.
She said that, while the World Bank top leadership will push hard for gas, it would be a “pretty thorny discussion”, with “more progressive executive directors probably trying to hold fire”.
Voting power is proportionate to the shares each government holds and, while the US has the most at 16%, other nations like Japan, China and European countries also have substantial sway.
If the bank does start backing gas infrastructure like pipelines and ports, Witt said she expects a lot of developing countries will be keen to access that funding – particularly in Asia where “there’s a massive dash for gas”.
The post Trump shifts US funds from shutting down foreign fossil fuels to expanding them appeared first on Climate Home News.
Trump shifts US funds from shutting down foreign fossil fuels to expanding them
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Countries have completed the first “global review” of their progress towards reversing nature loss by 2030 at the COP17 biodiversity talks in Yerevan, Armenia.
The review “notes with deep concern” that, unless action is “rapidly accelerated”, the goal to reverse nature loss and meet a set of 23 targets by 2030 “will not be achieved”.
It “urges” countries to accelerate action, including by “increased ambition in addressing the gaps”.
Much of the discussions in Yerevan focused on how to raise the necessary funds to help developing countries protect nature.
Some major economies pushed to expand the range of nations that are expected to provide finance, with countries agreeing at the end of the two weeks of talks that non-donors that want to contribute can “signal interest” before COP18.
This came after developed countries failed to meet a target to significantly ramp up nature finance over the last few years.
It also came as a landmark fund agreed at COP16 in Colombia to pay communities for the genetic resources derived from nature stands nearly empty two years on.
The Yerevan talks marked the halfway point of the “Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework” (GBF), the “Paris Agreement for nature” first made in 2022 and due to be achieved by 2030.
During the nearly 12-hour-long final plenary, countries voted for Quito, Ecuador, to host the COP18 nature talks, which will be held in 2028.
Countries managed to sign off on all the major negotiation texts, marking a stark contrast to COP16, which ran so far over time that the Colombian presidency lost “quorum”, forcing talks to resume in Rome months later.
Below, Carbon Brief has detailed analysis of all of the key outcomes from COP17.
Formal negotiations
Finance
Finance, predictably, was at the heart of the discord and deadlock at the Yerevan talks.
At COP17, discussions on finance had to achieve several outcomes.
The first part – to take stock of biodiversity finance mobilised so far to meet the nature deal’s goals – fell under the global review.
As the global report noted, developed countries failed to meet their commitments to raise “at least $20bn a year by 2025” for nature. Delegates pointed to falling aid levels and a sharp 27% decline in environmental funding for the 2026-30 period.
The second part was to agree on how to mobilise resources for the next four years, to meet the GBF’s goals and targets.
Calls to “broaden the contributor base” of who pays to protect nature – and whether that should include emerging economies – became the most fraught element of the talks.
Eventually, countries agreed on what Switzerland described as a “super, mega-delicate” text. It hinged on major “political compromises”, with “no major winner or loser”, according to Kenya.
Per the decision, countries that want to be included on a list of developed country donors can “signal interest” through bilateral, confidential consultations before COP18 and every alternate COP after.
Finally, countries also agreed on criteria to shape and resource a new, permanent financial mechanism to protect nature after 2030.
However, this did not immediately take the form of a new fund under the COP that biodiverse countries have demanded since 2022, deferring the mechanism’s institutional structure to COP18.
Resource mobilisation discussions at the GBF’s halfway mark were supposed to agree on how to close the “biodiversity finance gap” and to “increase resources from all sources” to “at least” $200bn per year by 2030, as set out in target 19 of the GBF.
The talks were largely dominated by a push, led by the JUSCANZ bloc of developed countries, to “broaden the contributor base”. This could see emerging economies, such as Qatar, China, Saudi Arabia and India, being added to the list of countries that pay to protect nature.
Article 20 of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) states that developed countries “shall provide new and additional financial resources” to developing countries to meet the costs of implementing measures to protect nature.
The text states that other countries – including emerging economies – may “voluntarily assume” these obligations to pay. However, it adds that this list of developed countries “shall” be reviewed periodically and amended “if necessary”.
The list was last amended in 2006.
(See this “jargon buster” which explains the specific meaning and legal weight of various terms and verbs used in UN formal documents.)
Discussions around this fraught subject had reached a dead end at intersessional talks this year, but resurfaced in Yerevan.
The first “non-paper” had four different options for expanding the contributor base. These ranged from using the World Bank’s country income groups “as a proxy” to identify high-income countries, to commissioning a study on the impacts of being included on the list.
By 21 October, the number of options swelled to eight, including two from Saudi Arabia and one from Peru.
Some countries “expressed concern” that certain options were based on a CBD secretariat study on “what constitutes a developed country”, Earth Negotiations Bulletin reported.
By the end of the first week, it was clear that the finance deadlock would have to go into informal ministerial consultations for any consensus to emerge.
At a press conference on 28 October, Christopher O’Sullivan, Ireland’s nature minister and representing the EU delegation, told Carbon Brief:
“Our position isn’t that we want to pull back in terms of contributing…but it’s been 20 years since that list was added to, times have changed and there are new realities. We just simply want those new realities reflected. I don’t fully understand why there’s so much opposition to that.”
The EU chose not to comment on which countries it would like to see on that list.
Lim Li Ching from the Third World Network, meanwhile, called the push for others to “assume the obligations” of developed countries “sheer hypocrisy”, adding that any country could make a voluntary contribution. She told Carbon Brief:
“At a forum like the CBD, this linking of income status with finance does not take into account where historical and current responsibilities lie. If you want to generate more funding for biodiversity, let’s look at sovereign debt burdens and rules, which are inequitable for developing countries. But if you can fund wars, and provide resources for your defence industry, then you know where the priorities are.”
On 29 October – at a plenary meant to adopt final texts for the most contentious subjects – Norway’s Gaute Hanssen announced that resource-mobilisation discussions would go into a smaller “friends of the chair” meeting.
Facilitated by Carolina Caceres from Canada and Imèn Meliane from Tunisia, the meeting would discuss the most contentious elements of a draft decision that had swelled to 112 brackets, denoting areas of disagreement on specific details in the text.
While the meeting was open to all, countries that were called to be present included Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, the EU, Fiji, Norway, Russia, Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and the UK.
At the same time, a “non-paper” text by finance and environment ministers laid out countries’ red lines and compromises.
