On 12 December, the fifth anniversary of the Paris Agreement on climate was marked — the international framework for reducing emissions at a global level. Next year, at Cop 26 in Glasgow, countries will need to finalise all remaining procedural elements (finance, transparency) to allow the Agreement to operate at full capacity.

However, according to the report Five years lost, published by eighteen international non-governmental organisations including the Italian Re:common, there are currently twelve mega fossil fuel projects under development which, if carried out, would release 175 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. A volume of CO2 sufficient to exhaust half of the remaining carbon budget for staying below the fateful threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius. This would significantly slow the processes demanded by the international community. From the signing of the Paris Agreement to today, the world's leading banks and investment funds have financed the companies active in these twelve projects with approximately 3 trillion dollars.

What are the mega fossil fuel projects under development

Among these projects are the exploration of vast gas fields in Mozambique, where France's Total and Italy's Eni are present; oil and gas fields in Suriname; shale gas and oil fields in the Permian Basin in the United States; the newly discovered Vaca Muerta oil fields in Argentina; coal and gas mines in Bangladesh's Payra hub; a coal power plant boom in China subsidised with state funds; mining exploration to extract coal in India and the Philippines; and oil and gas fields and pipeline construction in the eastern Mediterranean.

urgewald @urgewald

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++BREAKING++ 18 NGOs release a report today showcasing the 12 most devastating fossil fuel projects under development. These expansion projects alone would use up three-quarters of the total remaining carbon budget. #FiveYearsLost [1/x]

Read the report: urgewald.org/five-years-lost

♥ 94💬 5 10 dic 2020 · Apri su X →

"Five years have passed since the Paris Agreement, yet the business model of the fossil fuel industry has remained unchanged," said Alessandro Runci of Re:common, one of the report's authors. "Companies like Eni have continued to expand, as in Mozambique, where the discovery of enormous gas reserves has turned into a curse for local communities. Banks such as Unicredit and Intesa Sanpaolo — the latter among the most fossil fuel-exposed in Europe — must immediately stop financing the companies that are devastating the planet."

The NGOs behind the report believe that, in order to avoid the most catastrophic impacts of the climate crisis, financing must be immediately halted for those companies that continue to develop new fossil fuel projects.

ReCommon ✓ @Recommon

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Non solo una bomba climatica, si chiama #EastMed il gasdotto che infiamma il #Mediterraneo e che rischia di destabilizzare ancor di più i precari equilibri geopolitici della regione.
recommon.org/cinque-anni-pe…
#FiveYearsLost #MakeParisReal #ClimateAction
@fffitalia @rubio_chef

♥ 9 10 dic 2020 · Apri su X →

Under Re:common's scrutiny is the exploitation of gas in Mozambique, led by Eni and France's Total, which is causing devastation and violence in the region of Cabo Delgado. The area is set to develop LNG (liquefied natural gas) to exploit reserves of over 100 trillion cubic metres of extractable gas, which within a few years have made the country the third-largest reserve in Africa after Nigeria and Libya.

In the eastern Mediterranean, another Italian company, Edison, is among the proponents of the mega-pipeline Eastmed, which is intended to connect the region's gas fields — many of them controlled by Eni — with European markets. Eastmed would have a significant climate impact: it would transport fossil fuels with a climate-altering impact equivalent to the combined annual emissions of France, Italy and Spain.

Which banks have financed fossil fuels

On the finance side, American giants Blackrock, Vanguard and Citigroup lead the ranking of the largest financiers of companies involved in these projects, followed by British firms Barclays and Hsbc and France's Bnp Paribas.

"Fuelling fossil expansion are also Italy's Intesa Sanpaolo and Unicredit, which together, from 2016 to the present, have financed the fossil fuel companies driving the twelve projects with the astronomical sum of 30 billion, with Eni topping the list of beneficiaries," explains Luca Manes of Re:common.

Unicredit has recently adopted fossil fuel policies that are moving in the right direction; Intesa Sanpaolo, however — which has a six-billion credit facility for the circular economy — is one of the few European lending institutions yet to set a date for the phase-out of coal.