No Coal Go Green! Project Video “Tell Japan to Stop Financing Overseas Coal Power!”

No Coal Go Green! Project Video
“Tell Japan to Stop Financing Overseas Coal Power!”
Push the Japanese public and private sectors to withdraw from the 3 coal-fired power projects!

The Finance in Common Summit is an international conference that will be held in Paris, France, on November 9-12, 2020. This global summit is the first opportunity for public financial institutions around the world to gather and discuss their roles and challenges. It will bring together development banks, international organizations, institutional investors, government ministries and agencies from each country to discuss the role of public financial institutions in achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

In recent years, governments have set a target year to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions to move towards “decarbonization” and private banks are promoting the withdrawal of investment (divestment) from fossil fuels, especially coal-fired power generation projects. Japan has also set such a target year as 2050, which the newly appointed Prime Minister Suga announced at his first policy speech on October 26. With this new specific target, it is expected that efforts to reduce domestic CO2 emissions will be strengthened.

However, coal-fired power projects that are being planned overseas have been left out, and Japanese public financial institutions, banks, and companies are continuing to support or are considering support for them. In addition to the negative impacts of coal-fired power generation on climate change, these 3 projects (see table below) face various issues such as environmental pollution at the proposed sites and human rights violations affecting the local community. Residents at the project sites and environmental NGOs have been demanding the cancellation of these projects. However, the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC), Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), and private banks are considering supporting and the Nippon Export and Investment Insurance (NEXI) is considering insuring these projects. We created a video to let domestic and foreign institutional investors and government officials know about these projects that involve the Japanese public and private sectors.

Please urge the financial institutions that are supporting/considering supporting the 3 projects shown in this video to withdraw from the projects and put more focus on tackling the climate crisis. Institutional investors, in particular, can tell banks and companies that investing in coal-fired power projects has high risks, that these actions are inconsistent with the Paris Agreement, and that business strategies should be aligned with the Paris Agreement. Please accelerate the movement towards decarbonization by calling for aggressive measures to combat climate change. In order to end projects overseas, we need pressure and voices from within and outside Japan.

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