Researchers have found the world’s leading economies have more than doubled subsidies to coal-fired power plants, often in other, poorer nations, over three years, and Australia is one of the leaders.
Despite promising a decade ago to phase out fossil fuel subsidies, the world’s leading economies have more than doubled subsidies to coal-fired power plants over three years, putting climate goals at risk, the researchers said.
AAP Newsagency reports between 2014 and 2017, G20 governments more than halved direct support for coal mining, from $US22 billion to about $US10 billion on average each year, according to a report by the London-based Overseas Development Institute (ODI) think tank.
The ODI paper comes as leaders of the G20 nations including Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison are due to gather in Osaka, Japan, on Friday and Saturday.
AAP reports over the same period they boosted backing for coal-fired power plants, particularly supporting construction of the plants in other, often poorer nations, from $US17 billion to $US47 billion a year.
The highest amounts of total support to coal consumption were identified in Indonesia at US$2.3 billion a year, Italy and Australia, both about US$870 million, the United States at US$708 million, and the United Kingdom with US$682 million, it reported.
China and Japan, hosting a G20 summit this week in Osaka, were the biggest providers of public finance for coal power, followed by South Korea and India.
While the UK frequently runs its own electricity grid without any coal power at all, a parliamentary report in June criticised the billions of pounds used to help to build fossil fuel power plants overseas.
While spending from national budgets on coal fell, as did tax breaks, other forms of support, from development finance institutions, export-credit agencies and state-owned enterprises, soared, the report said.
“You can see they’re pretty much exporting the dirty energy systems to countries in much earlier stages of their development,” Ipek Gencsu, a researcher at ODI and a lead author of the report, said.
AAP reports those include nations such as Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan and Vietnam, she said, where foreign backing for coal power is slowing adoption of cleaner energy systems and locking in dirty energy and air pollution.
To meet an internationally agreed goal under the United Nations sponsored Paris Agreement of holding rising global temperatures to well below two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times, coal power will need to be phased out between 2030 and 2050, according to the Powering Past Coal Alliance.
That alliance, formed in 2017 and led by the British and Canadian governments, includes 30 countries as well as businesses and other organisations committed to switching to clean energy as rapidly as possible.
Coal currently provides about 40 per cent of the world’s electricity.
Governments are also helping support coal companies no longer financially viable, often to ensure a stable baseline of power to complement fluctuating renewable energies such as wind and solar, Ms Gencsu said.
Coal subsidies also continue in many places because of powerful coal lobbies, or because politicians prefer to delay politically painful decisions.
Globally, direct fossil fuel subsidies were $US427 billion last year, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
Indirect fossil fuel subsidies, including costs to health systems from air pollution and fossil fuel spill clean-ups, were estimated at $US5.2 trillion a year in 2017, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
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