Markets Wired

WASHINGTON – Today, the U.S. Department of the Treasury announced that the United States has joined Canada, the European Union, South Korea, Norway, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom to co-sponsor a proposal at a September 15 meeting of the OECD’s Participants to the Arrangement on Officially Supported Export Credits that seeks to end official export financing support for unabated coal power.  This proposal limits official export credit support for coal power by expanding the scope of the commitments made in the Sector Understanding on Export Credits for Coal Fired Electricity Generation Projects, a 2016 OECD guideline.  For the United States, only carbon capture, utilization, and sequestration technology, or CCUS, qualifies as abatement.

In conjunction with ending the use of public resources for coal power, the U.S. government at the OECD is examining ways to further support global exports related to renewable energy and climate change mitigation. The proposal is part of the U.S. Treasury’s implementation of the President’s executive orders on climate change and complements Treasury’s recent issuance of fossil fuel energy guidance for multilateral development banks.  We encourage all our international partners to join us in ending public sector export finance support for coal power and shifting to renewable sources of energy. 

In his January 2021 Executive Order on Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad, President Biden directed the Secretary of the Treasury, along with other departments and agencies, “to identify steps through which the United States can promote ending international financing of carbon-intensive fossil fuel-based energy while simultaneously advancing sustainable development and a green recovery.”  At their June Leaders’ Summit, the United States and our G7 partners “stress[ed] that international investments in unabated coal must stop now and … committ[ed] now to an end to new direct government support for unabated international thermal coal power generation by the end of 2021,” including through export finance.  The U.S. Department of the Treasury has sought to fulfill these obligations across its areas of responsibility for international economic policy, including through its leadership at the multilateral development banks and in negotiating export credit financing disciplines with other OECD countries. 

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