TOKYO, Nov 9 (Reuters) – More than 20 countries agreed to phase out coal power at the U.N. climate talks in Glasgow, but not Japan – a “leap backwards” for a country that once led the way on the Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The pact was among a raft of pledges made at the COP26 summit in the last week. Japan, the world’s third-biggest importer of the dirtiest fossil fuel, declined to sign because it needed to preserve all its options for power generation, officials said.

Critics called that short-sighted, even as new the prime minister, Fumio Kishida, has agreed to step up other environmental measures.

“Despite Prime Minister Kishida pledging to direct increased funding to climate finance, we are disappointed that he failed to address the elephant in the room – Japan‘s dependency on coal,” said Eric Christian Pedersen, head of responsible investments at Danish fund manager Nordea Asset Management.

The criticism highlights the shift in Japan‘s circumstances. It led climate change efforts during the 1990s Kyoto Protocol era, but has been burning more coal and other fossil fuels after the Fukushima disaster 10 years ago left many nuclear plants idle.

Not phasing out coal has “positioned Japan to take a leap backwards by signalling thermal power plants can keep running based on new technologies that do not exist,” said Kiran Aziz, head of responsible investments at KLP, Norway’s largest pension fund.

China, the world’s biggest source of climate change-fuelling gases, did not sign the pact and President Xi Jinping did not attend the conference. The country has said it would reduce its use of coal for electricity by 1.8 percent over the next five years.

Japan has pledged billions of dollars for vulnerable countries and to support building infrastructure in Asia for renewables and cleaner-burning fuels. It has also cut targets for coal use and raised those for renewables.

“In Japan, where resources are scarce and the country is surrounded by the sea, there is no single perfect energy source,” Noboru Takemoto, an industry ministry deputy director, told Reuters. “For this reason, Japan does not support the statement” on coal.

The ministry said last year it would accelerate shutdowns of coal-fired plants by 2030, later setting minimum efficiency standards and requiring companies to submit annual updates on phase-outs.

But companies are resisting such plans, a senior executive at a major Japanese generator said.

“It is being delayed and dragged out because a lot of companies are saying these units still work and are cheaper,” the executive said, adding that “a leadership push is needed.”

A Reuters survey of Japanese companies operating old coal power units, including Hokuriku Electric Power and Hokkaido Electric Power, showed that most of them have not decided schedules to shut them down.

Hokuriku Electric plans to shut just one 250-megawatt coal unit in 2024, a spokesperson told Reuters,

“Our coal-fired thermal power plants play an important role,” in maintaining stable electricity supplies, the spokesperson said.

Hokkaido Electric, which shut two coal units in 2019, has no closings planned, while the other five companies surveyed said they have no firm proposals. Some are looking at using cleaner fuels, such as ammonia, to burn with coal and other technologies to keep them operating more cleanly.

“For pro-coal corporate Japan, what’s more important is business, not the planet,” said Mutsuyoshi Nishimura, a former senior Japanese government official and chief climate change negotiator. “It’s sad to see there is no vision for a better, more sustainable and more competitive Japan.” – Reuters

WASHINGTON – The United States plans to invest in five to 10 large infrastructure projects around the world in January as part of a broader Group of Seven initiative to counter China’s Belt and Road Initiative, a senior U.S. official said on Monday.

A U.S. delegation led by President Joe Biden’s deputy national security adviser, Daleep Singh, identified at least 10 promising projects in Senegal and Ghana during the latest in a series of “listening tours” last week, the official said.

Officials are meeting with government and private-sector leaders as they hunt for projects to be funded under the Build Back Better World (B3W) initiative launched by the G7 rich democracies in June. Plans could be finalized during a G7 meeting in December, the official said.

A U.S. delegation visited Ecuador, Panama and Colombia during a similar tour in early October, with another slated to visit Asia before year-end, the official said, without naming any specific Asian countries.

The G7 B3W initiative is aimed at narrowing the $40 trillion in infrastructure investment that developing countries will need by 2035 and providing an alternative to problematic lending practices by China, officials have said.

The United States will offer developing countries “the full range” of U.S. financial tools, including equity stakes, loan guarantees, political insurance, grants and technical expertise to focus on climate, health, digital technology and gender equality, the official told reporters.

The effort is seeking to “identify flagship projects that could launch by the start of next year,” the official said.

Singh was joined in Africa by Alexia Latortue, deputy chief executive officer of the Millennium Challenge Corp, and Travis Adkins, deputy assistant administrator for Africa at the U.S. International Development Finance Corp, said Emily Horne, spokesperson for the White House National Security Council.

Biden sought to advance the initiative during a meeting on the sidelines of the COP26 UN climate conference with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and other G7 partners, she added.

The administration official said senior officials in Senegal and Ghana welcomed U.S. assurances that unlike China, the world’s largest creditor, the United States would not require non-disclosure agreements or collateral agreements that could result in later seizure of ports or airports.

Projects discussed included setting up a possible vaccine manufacturing hub for West Africa in Senegal, bolstering renewable energy supplies, boosting lending to women-owned businesses, and narrowing the digital divide. – Reuters

GLASGOW – Poor nations are pressuring their wealthy counterparts at the U.N. climate summit to pay up for the mounting damage being caused by global warming, pointing to increasing powerful storms, cyclones, droughts and floods afflicting their people.

The campaign being waged at the U.N. climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland seeks hundreds of billions of dollars per year more for climate-vulnerable economies even as they struggle to access some $100 billion pledged by world powers years ago.

Those previously promised funds, meant to help developing nations transition off fossil fuels and adapt to the future realities of a warmer world, were offered in recognition that poorer countries are least responsible for climate change.

“We’ve been too slow on mitigation and adaption, and so now we have this big and growing problem of loss and damage,” said Harjeet Singh, an advisor with Climate Action Network, who is involved in the negotiations on behalf of developing countries.

He said negotiations so far were focused on including language about “loss and damage” in the official text of the summit agreement, a request that he said was facing resistance from the United States, the European Union and other developed countries worried by the potential costs and legal implications.

Asked whether the European Union should consider a loss and damage fund separate from funding for mitigation and adaptation, Juergen Zattler, head of the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, said he believed the question was premature.

“I don’t think the discussion is at that stage yet,” he told reporters at the Glasgow summit. “We do not know yet what loss and damage actually is, how it is different from adaptation. We are poking in the dark here.”

EU climate policy chief Frans Timmermans told reporters the bloc supported efforts to “get money where it needs to be as quickly as possible” but that work still needed to be done to get the details right.

A representative of the U.S. delegation at the conference did not respond to a request for comment.

Climate-vulnerable countries have been raising the issue of who should pay for climate damage since the earliest international talks on global warming decades ago, before the impacts of global warming were seen as a current threat.

Economists now estimate the costs of damage from climate change-related weather events could be around $400 billion per year by 2030. A study commissioned by development agency Christian Aid, meanwhile, estimated that climate damage could cost vulnerable countries a fifth of their gross domestic product by 2050.

“It has been a fight every time to get loss and damage to become a standing item at COP. We need to continue to hold the big emitting countries accountable,” said Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner, a representative of the Climate Vulnerable Forum representing nations disproportionately affected by global warming.

Singh, from the Climate Action Network said wealthy nations could acquire the funds, at least in part, by revoking subsidies and imposing fees on fossil fuel companies.

He added that without some financial assistance, the costs of damage from climate change could bankrupt fragile economies, hampering their ability to contribute to the fight against climate change. If financially ruined, for example, countries will further struggle to fund measures like switching off dirty coal.

“If your house is on fire, you first put out the fire. Not think about how to prevent fires 10 years from now,” he said. – Reuters