‘Keep dirty energy out of Green Climate Fund’, demand activists

A coalition of around 300 civil society organisations have voiced concerns after it emerged the Green Climate Fund (GCF) could be used to develop nuclear, dams and other fossil fuels.

The calls come ahead of the operational launch of the fund when 24 of its board members meet at its headquarters in South Korea next week. It was launched as part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and aims to transfer money from the developed to the developing world.

Board members are expected to agree on what sectors the fund will be available to.

But the activists, who are mainly from some of the poorest regions of the world, are demanding that the fund is not used to support high carbon projects.

Lidy Nacpil, director of Jubilee South Asia/Pacific Movement on debt and development said, “We are organizations, movements and communities from developing countries whose citizens bear the brunt of the most harmful consequences of climate change.” 

Nacpil added, “We’ve seen first hand how international financial institutions include fossil fuel and other harmful energy projects in their climate and energy finance under the flawed logic of ‘lower carbon’ energy and switching to ‘lower emissions’ fuels. Financing any fossil fuels and harmful energy through the Green Climate Fund is unacceptable.”

Alex Scrivener, climate campaigner at World Development Movement said that the GCF should be used to help developing countries’ transition to clean energy, adding that coal, gas and oil have no place in the fund.

“The UK government has already promised to stop giving aid money to dirty coal-fired power plants. As a member of the Green Climate Fund’s board, the UK should make sure the fund has strict rules banning dirty energy, so that we can move towards a genuinely fair, clean and sustainable energy system.”

Despite this, there have been calls from industry leaders in the UK recently for more investment in climate mitigation. Chris Kitchen, general secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers said that, with carbon capture and storage, which is believed to be able to catch around 90% of emissions from power stations, coal can be a part of the solution to climate change and not the cause of it.

Image: Greg Goebel via Flickr

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