Reduce coal technology exports, MFN!
11 February 2015
Parties in the Workstream 2 Technical Expert Process yesterday coined a new acronym: MFN, “More, Faster, Now.” ECO is not a fan of acronyms for acronyms sake but this one could prove useful, particularly for those parties with a dirty coal habit.
It emerged that a number of OECD parties—Japan, South Korea, and Germany among them—have spent nearly US$15 billion over the past 10 years on exports of coal technologies abroad. This has made these fossil fuel projects cheaper than clean and renewable energy solutions.
Renewable energy solutions have innumerable benefits: the MFN mantra is more action on climate change at a faster pace, starting now. Spending billions on technology exports to advance the use of the world’s dirtiest fossil fuel does exactly the opposite.
ECO hopes this misunderstanding can be cleared up, ASAP, starting at the OECD Export Credit Group deliberations later this year.