Coal financing is still booming – led by China (Bloomberg/Mining Weekly – December 20, 2023)

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The amount of bank financing going to mining coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel of them all, remains at surprisingly high levels. Most of it is coming from China.

A new report from researchers at BloombergNEF shows that all funding for coal projects and coal-exposed companies needs to drop precipitously to limit the chances of global temperatures rising more than 1.5 °C by midcentury.

Banks arranged about $120-billion of financing for coal projects last year, equal to about 13% of all the financing arranged for fossil-fuel projects, according to BNEF. That ratio needs to fall to just 1% at most by the 2040s to limit the impact of climate change, BNEF’s research shows.

The lion’s share of the coal business emanates from China. In fact, 76% of measured coal financing – or $93-billion – took place in the world’s second-biggest economy last year. The US was a distant second at $10-billion, followed by $3-billion for both India and Germany.

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