The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has announced it will end export credit support for unabated coal-fired power plants. It said that it expected the ban to come into effect by the end of October 2021. It said in a statement: “The ban will come into effect once participants complete their formal internal decision-making processes, which are expected by the end of October 2021.”
Participants include: Australia, Canada, the EU, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, South Korea, Switzerland, Turkey, the UK, and the USA.
The OECD said that the agreement will ban supported export credits and restricted aid to new coal-fired power plants that do not have operational carbon capture, utilisation, and storage (CCUS) facilities. The new ban will also apply to existing coal-fired power plants unless the purpose of the infrastructure is pollution or CO2 abatement and does not extend the lifetime of the plant. An exception will apply to equipment in existing plants where it is being retrofitted to install CCUS.