The UK will formally end all direct support for coal mining and power plants abroad but still help African countries “extract and use” gas and oil, prime minister Boris Johnson announced on Monday.
Johnson made the remarks at the opening of the UK-Africa investment summit working in london – a one-day event which signalled the UK’s intent to compete for African business with China, Russia, Germany and France – which have strengthened their investment strategy on the continent.
16 African leaders attended the summit planned a day before political and business leaders meet in Davos, Switzerland. Egypt's president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Kenya's Uhuru Kenyatta, Nigeria's Muhammadu Buhari and Paul Kagame of Rwanda all found London.
The summit seemed to be an opportunity to push climate action among the UK's key diplomatic priorities, ahead of hosting this year's UN climate talks – known as Cop26 – in Glasgow in November.
Johnson acknowledged that most African countries were around the frontline of climate impacts and biodiversity loss.
He committed to end “new direct official development assistance” to thermal coal mining and coal power plants overseas, including aid money and loan guarantees and support from the UK's export credit agency.
“There isn't any reason for the united kingdom reducing the quantity of coal we burn if we then trundle over to Africa and line our pockets by encouraging African states to use more of it,” he said.
Instead, Johnson said the united kingdom is needed support Africa's transition to “lower and zero carbon alternatives”.
“First by helping you to extract and employ oil and gas within the cleanest, greenest way possible – and we are world leaders in that and have much to share – but additionally by turbocharging our support for solar, wind and hydro and all the other carbon free sources of energy that surround us,” he told African heads of state and business leaders.
In practice, hardly any of the UK's development money has been utilized to aid coal projects overseas recently.
Responding to some UK parliamentary inquiry last year, Claire O'Neill, the UK's former clean growth minister and now Cop26 president, said the UK government’s export finance agency had “not funded any new coal-fired power-plants overseas since 2002”.
A spokeswoman for the Department of International Development (Dfid) said the department had not supported coal-fired power plants abroad since 2012. Support would, however, be made readily available for decommissioning projects, she added.
Labour MP Matthew Pennycook said this made it “difficult to see this as anything apart from tokenistic”.
“The more pertinent concern is the UK’s ongoing support for overseas oil and gas projects. Act with that, Pm,” he tweeted.
“This is greenwash and hypocrisy of the highest order,” Molly Scott Cato, Green MEP for that South West of England, told CHN. “This can be a reminder of what has effectively been UK policy for nearly Two decades; hardly an announcement.”
It is unclear what proportion from the UK's current development and export credit budget will be impacted by the announcement.
Sarah Wykes, lead analyst on global warming and energy at the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (Cafod), told CHN that between 2010 and 2023, Cafod identified lb84million the UK government had spent on coal equipment – “a tiny proportion” of spending, she said.
“It’s good the government has now closed that loophole. It’s one step forward but a stop by the ocean” compared with oil and gas support, she added. “However, if the government is serious about ending energy poverty in Africa, it must invest in decentralised alternative energy,” she said.
However, the united kingdom government has continued to pour quite a lot of public funds to aid oil and gas projects abroad.
During the 2023-2023 financial year alone, britain's export finance (UKEF) agency provided more than lb2billion ($2.6bn) in support and loans guarantees to oil and gas projects overseas, according to an analysis by DeSmog UK.
A recent report by Cafod also discovered that between 2010 and 2023, 60% of the UK's support for energy in developing countries was fossil fuel energy. During that time, 97% from the UK export finance's support for energy projects – or lb3.6bn ($4.7) – visited fossil fuel developments.
Andrew Norton, director from the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), described the announcement as “a first step within the right direction”.
“However it needs to go further,” he added, contacting the UK to “stop subsidising all fossil fuel exploration and production”.
Adam McGibbon, a senior climate campaigner at Global Witness, told CHN, the announcement will make “very little difference to the UK's lack of climate ambition”.
“It leaves untouched the billions in oil and gas support that the UK continues to invest worldwide,” he explained.
