Three years after the first deal was signed with South Africa, top officials from the UK and Germany have disclosed that they are hesitant to pursue additional Just Energy Transition Partnerships (JETPs) – an initiative launched at COP26 in 2021 to help developing countries leap frog fossil fuels, especially coal, to renewables.
So far the multi-billion-dollar deals – which involve a package of government and private investment – have been launched for South Africa, Indonesia, Vietnam and Senegal, backed by several European countries, the European Union, the United States and Canada.
At a briefing with journalists at the COP29 climate talks in Baku last month, Jochen Flasbarth, state secretary in Germany’s Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, said his country and the other developed nations involved are “reluctant” to enter into more JETPs, emphasising that the current priority is to “make the existing JETPs work”.
Flasbarth said wealthy donor nations and multilateral development banks are working on what he described as a “country-led platform” approach for additional countries, which will incorporate a range of lessons from the JETPs.
These lessons, according to UK Special Representative on Climate Rachel Kyte, include establishing “country ownership” as “a key element”, offering support based on a country’s progress in its transition, and addressing “sensitivities around different stakeholders” on the ground.
Kyte said there is no other way to do a clean energy transition except to put in place ambitious plans that are managed by the developing country in question with support from international partners.
Evolution of JETPs
With discussion surrounding the future of JETPs, links to similar initiatives with different names are being identified. Kyte said momentum is picking up around country platforms, whereby recipient governments present a “tailored, focused programme” with financing needs and projects that fit priorities defined by them.
At COP29, for example, the government of Lesotho, Standard Chartered and Standard Bank announced a “country platform” to support the southern African nation’s ambitions to provide clean, affordable power for its people and the wider region.
The agreement – entitled “His Majesty King Letsie III Just Energy Transition Fund” – will finance the build-out of renewable energy to meet domestic demand in Lesotho and surplus generation for export to neighbouring South Africa.
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John Murton, a former British diplomat who was heavily involved in negotiating the initial JETPs, now advises Standard Chartered on sustainability. On LinkedIn, he said that through Lesotho’s new platform, partners can cooperate to identify barriers to private investment, support long-term policy and regulatory reform in the country, and discuss where lending on easy terms can be used most effectively.
This is not the first initiative that looks similar to a JETP. In October, Colombia – which could have been a country of interest for a JETP coal-to-clean deal – launched a $40-billion investment plan for its green energy transition and nature protection, targeting a shift away from fossil fuel production. Environment minister Susana Muhamad said it would mirror the JETPs.
Flasbarth also noted that Germany is cooperating with India on renewable energy and urban development to aid the South Asian country’s energy transition. But he said in a separate interview with Clean Energy Wire at COP29 that a JETP is no longer on the cards with India.
One key reason, according to analysts, is that India – the world’s most populous country with growing energy needs – is not interested in a deal, like the other JETPs, that would focus on phasing out coal, given that its coal production is projected to keep rising this decade, and it prefers to seek financing for clean energy expansion.
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Laura Sabogal Reyes, a senior policy advisor on development finance with E3G, said country platforms are “the evolution of JETPs”. But unlike their predecessors, they are unlikely to kick off with big top-line financing numbers, instead taking a “more mature” bottom-up approach that is less “flashy”, she said.
The idea, she added, is to meet countries where they are now on what they want to prioritise, their pipeline of projects, and their needs for technical support and policy reform, with donors coming in to contribute on that basis.
Slow progress
Sabogal Reyes said many expectations and promises behind the JETP concept “were not fully realised” within the expected time-frame, casting doubt on whether the initiative – which was praised as the “end of coal” by the UK government in Glasgow – will continue.
The next step for JETPs is to “deliver [the promises] to the best way possible”, while taking into consideration “the good, the bad and the ugly” from the process and using that to develop new country platforms, she added.
Thandolwethu Lukuko, Climate Action Network’s director for South Africa, said the initial JETP pledges had been made with no established pipeline of projects, meaning that when an investment plan was later presented by the government receiving the money “it was then the partners saying, ‘well, we might not want to finance this’.” That led to negotiations that have lengthened the process, he added.
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Wale Shonibare, director for energy financial solutions, policy and regulation at the African Development Bank, said future country partnerships would need to evolve in response to the delays affecting the JETPs and the emphasis on debt in their financing mix which has prioritised soft loans over pure grants – something South Africa had not expected at the beginning.
Of the $8.5 billion originally pledged to South Africa, less than 3% was due to be delivered in the form of grants.
“It’s not just about what the donors are willing to give; it’s also about what the countries are willing to accept,” Shonibare said.
Since the launch of the deal, just one coal-fired plant – Komati – has been decommissioned and repurposed to produce renewable energy, a development made possible through World Bank support rather than under the JETP. The initiative, meanwhile, has provoked a backlash from the country’s labour union which called for its suspension.
A November update on the JETP, issued by the British government, said that, based on energy security considerations, power utility Eskom had decided to delay the planned decommissioning of three coal-fired power stations until 2030, and to front-load renewables repowering and community development at those sites ahead of the coal plant closures.
In Indonesia, there has been divergence with donors on financing terms and coal plants, with little progress recorded in retiring fossil fuel power stations. The Indonesian government also criticised the deal’s financing terms, as only 0.8% of the total was offered as grants.
Last month at the G20 summit in Brazil, President Prabowo Subianto announced that Indonesia will phase out coal-fired and all other fossil-fuel power plants by 2040 – but did not specify whether this would be part of the country’s JETP deal.
In Vietnam, the JETP has been criticised for a lack of transparency by a government partner organisation. The share of loans versus grants has been another bone of contention, with only 2% of the financial package offered as grants.
Senegal’s deal, announced in 2023, is still in the development stage, but Aida Diop, senior programme officer with the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI), told Climate Home its successful implementation will depend on inclusive and transparent governance. Of the €2.5 billion ($2.6 billion) pledged, only about 6.6% is in grants. This, alongside delays in disbursing funds and the absence of a clear investment plan to date, “risks increasing public debt and slowing progress on renewable energy”, Diop said.
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A further problem with the JETPs has been scepticism over whether they are pursuing the people-centred approach that is regarded as fundamental to just transition. South Africa’s investment plan, for example, prioritised three sectors – electricity, new energy vehicles (NEVs) and green hydrogen – while skills development ranked low.
A 2023 investigation by Climate Home and Oxpeckers Investigative Environmental Journalism found that people in coal-reliant communities feared they would be unemployable in the near future as mines and power plants are decommissioned, and planned training programmes to reskill coal workers had yet to be rolled out at the local level.
Learning lessons
At COP29, Germany and Britain’s senior officials agreed there are lessons to be learned from how the JETPs have unfolded so far but said the experience has been a success nonetheless.
Flasbarth said South Africa’s JETP has “had its ups and downs, but in total it is a success story”. Kyte agreed, saying she would not claim the initiative is “going as fast as everybody would like it to” but that the original idea behind the JETPs remains important – and is one that the UK is pursuing as a priority.
Addressing concerns over slow progress, the UK climate envoy – who has worked on energy access for many years – also said unlocking certain financial flows first requires reforms including to markets, policy and regulation – which take time. These reforms need to happen alongside investment to build out the grid for renewable power supplies, before any coal decommissioning can take place, Kyte added.
In the case of South Africa, Flasbarth said public funding from donors had helped the South African government reform the regulatory framework for its electricity sector, which had created “legal certainty, transparency and lowered the risk for investing”. That, in turn, has opened up opportunities for the private sector to invest in expanding renewables.
On the funding instruments used in the JETPs, Kyte said multiple sources of finance had been brought together, depending on countries’ differing needs – and of the $9.3 billion committed to South Africa, “over $700 million of that was grants”, in addition to concessional loans and investments. Flasbarth said Germany’s €1.8 billion ($1.9bn) share of that JETP had included “a substantial amount of grants, coming to roughly 20%”, while the rest was highly concessional loans from the KfW Development Bank.
Kyte added that there is a need to double down on the JETPs to deliver them effectively, and also to draw lessons from the model so that other countries that want something similar – no matter what formal label is attached to it – can build on that experience.
(Reporting by Vivian Chime; editing by Joe Lo and Megan Rowling)
The post Why rich countries are “reluctant” on additional JETP coal-to-clean deals appeared first on Climate Home News.
Why rich countries are “reluctant” on additional JETP coal-to-clean deals
Discussing climate change can make a difference. Focusing on the impacts in everyday life is a good place to start, experts say.
When Bad Bunny climbed onto broken power lines during his Super Bowl halftime show, millions of viewers saw a spectacle. Climate communicators saw a lesson in how to talk about climate change.
Wondering How to Talk About Climate Change? Take a Lesson from Bad Bunny
Sydney, Thursday 19 March 2026 — In response to escalating attacks on gas fields in the Middle East, including Israeli strikes on Iran’s giant South Pars gas field and Iranian retaliations on gas fields in Qatar and Saudi Arabia, the following lines can be attributed to Solaye Snider, Campaigner at Greenpeace Australia Pacific:
“The targeting of gas fields across the Middle East is a perilous escalation that reinforces just how vulnerable our fossil-fuelled world really is.
“Oil and gas have long been used as tools of power and coercion by authoritarian regimes. They cause climate chaos and environmental pollution and they drive conflict and war. The energy security of every nation still hooked on gas, including Australia, is under direct threat.
“For countries that are reliant on gas imports, like Sri Lanka, Pakistan and South Korea, this crisis is just getting started. It can take months to restart a gas export facility once it is shut down, meaning the shockwaves of these strikes will be felt for a long time to come.
“It is a gross and tragic injustice that while civilians are killed and lose their homes to this escalating violence, and families struggle with a tightening cost-of-living, gas giants like Woodside and Santos have seen their share prices surge on the prospect of windfall war profits.
“We must break this cycle. Transitioning to local renewable energy is the way to protect Australian households from the inherent volatility of fossil fuels like gas.”
-ENDS-
Images available for download via the Greenpeace Media Library
Media contact: Lucy Keller on 0491 135 308 or lkeller@greenpeace.org
Greenpeace response to escalating attacks on gas fields in Middle East
Climate Change
DeBriefed 20 March 2026: Energy crisis deepens | Brazil’s new climate plan | New Zealand climate case
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Iran war fallout continues
WORK FROM HOME: The International Energy Agency has advised its member countries to take 10 steps in response to the ongoing energy crisis fuelled by the Iran war, including reducing highway speeds and encouraging people to work from home, said the Guardian. It came after retaliatory attacks between Israel and Iran continued to destroy energy infrastructure in the Middle East, causing energy prices to soar further, said Reuters.
SUPPLY DISRUPTED: The IEA also said it is prepared to make more of its member nations’ 1.4bn-barrel oil reserves available to help ease the impacts of what it called the “biggest supply disruption in the history of the oil market”, reported Bloomberg. The outlet noted that Asian countries have been hit hardest by the shortages, caused by a “near-halt” of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
EU SUMMIT: The energy crisis dominated talks at an EU leaders summit on Thursday, said Politico. Arriving at the summit, Spain’s prime minister Pedro Sánchez attacked other European leaders for using the energy crisis as an excuse to “gut climate policies”, according to the EU Observer. The Financial Times said that some European leaders have asked the European Commission to overhaul its flagship emissions trading system (ETS) by summer in response to the energy crisis.
COAL BOOST: In response to the conflict, utility companies in Asia are “boosting coal-fired power generation to cut costs and safeguard energy supply”, said Reuters. UN climate change executive secretary Simon Stiell told Reuters: “If there was ever a moment to accelerate that energy transition, breaking dependencies which have shackled economies, this is the time.”
Around the world
- WINDFARM WINDFALL: The Trump administration in the US is considering a nearly $1bn settlement with TotalEnergies to cancel the French energy company’s two planned windfarms off the US east coast and have it instead invest in fossil-gas infrastructure in Texas, according to documents seen by the New York Times.
- BUSINESS CLASH: Following “clashes” with the agribusiness sector, Brazil launched its new climate plan, which calls for a 49-58% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 2022 levels by 2025 and includes “specific guidelines for different sectors”, reported Folha de Sao Paolo.
- SALES SLUMP: Sales of liquified petroleum gas from India’s state-run oil companies have fallen by 17% this month due to cuts in deliveries to commercial and industrial consumers “amid the widespread logistical bottlenecks triggered by the Iran war”, said the Economic Times.
- CUBAN ENERGY CRISIS: The US imposed an “effective oil blockade” on Cuba, leaving the country facing its “worst energy crisis in decades”, reported the Washington Post. Meanwhile, Chinese exports of solar panels to the island have “skyrocketed” since 2023, it added.
- RECORD HIGHS: An “unprecedented” heatwave in the western and south-western US is “shattering dozens of temperature records” and could lead to drought in California in the coming months, reported the Los Angeles Times.
- VULNERABILITY CONCERNS: Landslides that killed more than 100 people in southern Ethiopia have “renewed concerns about Ethiopia’s vulnerability to climate-related disasters”, said the Addis Standard.
1%
The percentage of England’s land surface that could be devoted to renewables by 2050, according to the long-awaited “land-use framework” released by the UK government this week and covered by Carbon Brief.
Latest climate research
- Approaching international climate action by shifting the burden of mitigation onto higher-income countries could avoid 13.5 million premature deaths from air pollution in middle- and lower-income countries by 2050 | The Lancet Global Health
- Beavers can turn the ecosystems surrounding streams into “persistent” sinks of carbon that can sequester an order of magnitude more than non-beaver-modified ecosystems can store | Communications Earth & Environment
- Mobile-phone data from seven diverse countries during the summer heatwaves of 2022-23 showed a “widespread tendency to withdraw into homes” and an increase in out-of-home activities that can offer cooling, such as indoor retail | Environmental Research: Climate
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
Carbon Brief this week published a significant update to its map of how climate change is affecting extreme weather events around the world. The map now includes 232 new extreme weather events from studies published in 2024 and 2025. Of these events, 196 were made more severe or more likely to occur by human-driven climate change, 12 were made less severe or less likely to occur and 10 had no discernible human influence. (The remaining 14 studies were inconclusive.)
Spotlight
New Zealand breaks new ground on climate litigation
This week, Carbon Brief speaks to experts about a first-of-its-kind climate lawsuit in New Zealand.
Earlier this week, representatives from two environmentally focused legal advocacy groups challenged the New Zealand government’s climate-action plan in court.
The plaintiffs argued that the measures laid out in the plan are insufficient to achieve the country’s legal obligation to hold global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial temperatures.
The case could be “influential” in shaping lawsuits and rulings around the world, one legal expert not involved in the case told Carbon Brief.
Reductions vs removals
The new case contends that there are several issues regarding the New Zealand government’s response to climate change.
One of the key arguments the plaintiffs make is that New Zealand’s second emissions reduction plan, which covers the period from 2026-30, is overreliant on the use of tree-planting to achieve its targets.
When the plan was released in December 2024, it was “immediately clear that it was a pretty lacklustre plan”, Eliza Prestidge Oldfield, senior legal researcher at the Environmental Law Initiative, one of the groups behind the legal case, told Carbon Brief.
The plan called for large-scale planting of pine tree plantations, which are not native to New Zealand and have a high risk of burning. Because of this, there are concerns about how permanent any carbon removal provided by these plantations actually can be, experts told Carbon Brief.
Catherine Higham, senior policy fellow at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment who was not involved in the case, said:
“The lawyers are arguing that there are real challenges with equating the emissions that you may be able to remove from the atmosphere through afforestation with actual emissions reductions, which are much more certain.”
‘Global dialogue’
While other climate lawsuits elsewhere in the world have also focused on the inadequacy of a government’s plan to meet its stated emissions-reduction targets, this is the first such case that addresses the role of removals head-on.
Lucy Maxwell, co-director of the Climate Litigation Network, told Carbon Brief that the lawsuit “builds on a decade of climate litigation” in national, regional and international courts.
Maxwell, who was not involved in the New Zealand case, added that there is a “real global dialogue” between, not just plaintiffs, but national courts as well. She said:
“[National courts] look to common issues that have been decided in other countries. They’re not binding on that court if it’s at the national level, but they are influential.”
Given that many other countries have legal frameworks requiring their governments to create plans outlining the pathway to their long-term climate targets, Prestidge Oldfield told Carbon Brief that other jurisdictions “should be interested in these questions around the level of certainty”.
Higham noted that, even if the case is successful, addressing the plan’s shortfalls will face its own set of challenges. She told Carbon Brief:
“A lot of these decisions are political and they can be politically contentious…Those [measures] have to be put into action through legislation and that is then subject to the usual political process. So that’s where the challenge comes in.”
While she could not speculate on the outcome of the case, Prestidge Oldfield said it was “very heartening” to see that both the judge and the opposing counsel “appreciated how much of a concern climate change is globally”.
She added:
“It’s not a given that the judge would even be interested in climate change.”
Watch, read, listen
COMMON APPROACH: The Heated podcast analysed fossil-fuel advertisements and highlighted the most common deception tactics they employed.
THREAT ASSESSMENT: Mongabay mapped the potential threat that oil extraction poses to Venezuela’s ecosystems, including the Amazon rainforest and its coral reefs.
SALT LAKES? GREAT!: High Country News interviewed journalist Dr Caroline Tracey about her new book on saline lakes – such as Utah’s Great Salt Lake – the threats that face them and what they can teach us.
Coming up
- 23 March-2 April: Third meeting of the preparatory commission for the High Seas Treaty, New York
- 24-27 March: 64th session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Bangkok
- 26-29 March: 14th ministerial conference of the World Trade Organization, Yaoundé, Cameroon
Pick of the jobs
- International Centre of Research for the Environment and Development (CIRAD), IPCC chapter scientist | Salary: €3,200-3,750 per month. Location: Nogent-sur-Marne, France
- Avaaz, chief of staff | Salary: Dependent on location. Location: Remote, with preferred time zones
- Green Party, social media officer | Salary: £31,592-£32,192. Location: Remote or Westminster, UK
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly DeBriefed email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.
The post DeBriefed 20 March 2026: Energy crisis deepens | Brazil’s new climate plan | New Zealand climate case appeared first on Carbon Brief.
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