UK Accused of Hypocrisy Over Pledge to Extract Africa's Oil

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By Chloe Farand, Climate Homeย News

The UK will formally end all direct support for coal mining and power plants abroad but still help African countries โ€œextract and useโ€ oil and gas, prime minister Boris Johnson announced onย Monday.

Johnson made the remarks at the opening of the UK-Africa investment summit in London โ€“ a one-day event which signalled the UKโ€™s intent to compete for African business with China, Russia, Germany and France โ€“ all of which have strengthened their investment strategy on theย continent.

16 African leaders attended the summit planned a day before political and business leaders meet in Davos, Switzerland. Egyptโ€™s president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Kenyaโ€™s Uhuru Kenyatta, Nigeriaโ€™s Muhammadu Buhari and Paul Kagame of Rwanda all came toย London.

The summit was also an opportunity to push climate action as one of the UKโ€™s key diplomatic priorities, ahead of hosting this yearโ€™s UN climate talks โ€“ known as Cop26 โ€“ in Glasgow inย November.

Johnson acknowledged that most African countries were on the frontline of climate impacts and biodiversityย loss.

He committed to end โ€œnew direct official development assistanceโ€ to thermal coal mining and coal power plants overseas, including aid money and loan guarantees and support from the UKโ€™s export creditย agency.

โ€œThere is no point in the UK reducing the amount of coal we burn if we then trundle over to Africa and line our pockets by encouraging African states to use more of it,โ€ heย said.

Instead, Johnson said the UK would help support Africaโ€™s transition to โ€œlower and zero carbonย alternativesโ€.

โ€œFirst by helping you to extract and use oil and gas in the cleanest, greenest way possible โ€“ and we are world leaders in that and have much to share โ€“ but also by turbocharging our support for solar, wind and hydro and all the other carbon free sources of energy that surround us,โ€ he told African heads of state and businessย leaders.

In practice, very little of the UKโ€™s development money has been used to support coal projects overseas in recentย years.

Responding to a UK parliamentary inquiry last year, Claire Oโ€™Neill, the UKโ€™s former clean growth minister and now Cop26 president, said the UK governmentโ€™s export finance agency had โ€œnot funded any new coal-fired power-plants overseas sinceย 2002โ€.

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 available for decommissioning projects, sheย added.

Labour MP Matthew Pennycook said this made it โ€œdifficult to see this as anything other thanย tokenisticโ€.

โ€œThe more pertinent issue is the UKโ€™s ongoing support for overseas oil and gas projects. Act on that, Prime Minister,โ€ he tweeted.

โ€œThis is greenwash and hypocrisy of the highest order,โ€ Molly Scott Cato, Green MEP for the South West of England, told CHN. โ€œThis is a reminder of what has effectively been UK policy for nearly 20 years; hardly anย announcement.โ€

It is unclear what proportion of the UKโ€™s current development and export credit budget will be affected by the announcement. CHN contacted the UK government forย comment.

Sarah Wykes, lead analyst on climate change and energy at the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (Cafod), told CHN that between 2010 and 2017, Cafod identified ยฃ84million the UK government had spent on coal equipment โ€“ โ€œa tiny proportionโ€ of all spending, sheย said.

โ€œItโ€™s good that the government has now closed that loophole. Itโ€™s a step forward but a drop in the oceanโ€ compared with oil and gas support, she added. โ€œBut if the government is serious about ending energy poverty in Africa, it needs to invest in decentralised renewable energy,โ€ sheย said.

However, the UK government has continued to pour significant amounts of public funds to support oil and gas projectsย abroad.

During the 2018-2019 financial year alone, the UKโ€™s export finance (UKEF) agency provided more than ยฃ2 billion ($2.6 billion) in support and loans guarantees to oil and gas projects overseas, according to an analysis by DeSmog UK.

A recent report by Cafod also found that between 2010 and 2017, 60 percentย of the UKโ€™s support for energy in developing countries was fossil fuel energy. During that time, 97 percentย of the UK export financeโ€™s support for energy projects โ€“ or ยฃ3.6 billionย ($4.7 billion) โ€“ went to fossil fuelย developments.

Andrew Norton, director of the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), described the announcement as โ€œa first step in the rightย directionโ€.

โ€œBut it needs to go further,โ€ he added, calling on the UK to โ€œstop subsidising all fossil fuel exploration andย productionโ€.

Adam McGibbon, a senior climate campaigner at Global Witness, told CHN, the announcement would make โ€œvery little difference to the UKโ€™s lack of climateย ambitionโ€.

โ€œIt leaves untouched the billions in oil and gas support that the UK will continue to spend worldwide,โ€ heย said.

Image: DFID/Russell Watkins, CC-by-2.0

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