‘India reduced support to the fossil fuel industry by 4%

India reduced support to the fossil fuel industry by 4% from 2015 to 2019 even as the countries in the G20 forum of the world’s major economies are not walking the talk in addressing the climate crisis, a new report by BloombergNEF, a global research organisation, and Bloomberg Philanthropies released on Tuesday said.

The G20 countries provided $636 billion in direct support for fossil fuels in 2019, which is just 10% less than that in 2015, it added. The report noted India has reduced the support, but it has 66 coal power plants in the pipeline. India is second only to China, which has 247 coal power plants in the making among G20 countries while Indonesia has 33.

Most G20 countries have announced ambitious climate targets to reach the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5-degree Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels. But the report said they provided $3.3 trillion support for coal, oil, gas, and fossil-fuel power between 2015 and 2019.

It added the sum could have funded 4,232GW new solar power plants or over 3.5 times the size of the current US electricity grid. The G20, as a whole, has cut fossil fuel funding by 10% during 2015–19. But there are significant variations across countries. Eight countries of the forum–Australia, Canada, the US, Brazil, France, Indonesia, Mexico and China–increased their support to the fossil fuel industry.

“This support encourages the (potentially wasteful) use and production of fossil fuels. It can also distort prices and risks carbon ‘lock-in’— whereby assets funded today will be around for decades, locking in high levels of future emissions.