Climate change norms do not impact those producing and exporting fossil fuels to be burnt elsewhere.
In Egypt’s coastal city of Alexandria in the north, black dust coats streets and collects on rooftops in the neighbourhood adjoining a sprawling cement factory. Activists and local residents accuse the plant operated by the Alexandria Portland Cement Company, a subsidiary of Greece’s Titan Cement, of fouling the air by burning coal.
“Every night, we see particles falling from their chimneys. Under street lights, you can clearly see the dust raining down,” said Mostafa Mahmoud, a grocery store owner in the Wadi al-Qamar neighbourhood.
Like many cement manufacturers in Egypt and across North Africa, the factory uses imported coal to fire its kilns. Lately, more and more of the region’s coal is coming from the United States, according to U.S. export data.
A landmark agreement reached in Paris in 2015 to fight climate change requires countries to set targets and report on progress reducing national levels of planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions. But it does not impose such requirements for emissions generated from fossil fuels they drill, mine and ship elsewhere.
That has allowed the United States, Norway, Australia and others to say they are making progress toward international climate goals while also producing and exporting fossil fuels at breakneck pace, said Bill Hare, co-founder of Climate Action Tracker, an independent scientific project that tracks government climate action.
“Most of these fossil-fuel-exporting countries can get to look good with their domestic climate action,” he said on the sidelines of the COP29 conference in Baku this week. “Their exported emissions are someone else’s problem.”
U.S. fossil fuel exports – including coal, oil, gas and refined fuels – led to over 2 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions in other countries in 2022, according to a
calculation carried out by Climate Action Tracker and verified by Reuters using data from the International Energy Agency. That is equivalent to about a third of U.S. domestic emissions, the data showed.
Asked how Washington squares its climate ambitions with its fossil fuel production and exports, President Joe Biden’s climate adviser, Ali Zaidi, said strong energy output was needed to keep consumer prices low during a transition to cleaner fuels.
“I don’t think there is social license for a decarbonisation playbook that puts upward price pressure for retail consumers in the marketplace,” Zaidi told Reuters.
Incoming president Donald Trump, a climate change sceptic, has said he wants to further boost the nation’s fossil fuel production.
For other producers, greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel exports sometimes outweigh domestic emissions, Climate Action Tracker said.
That was true for Norway, Australia and Canada in 2022, the most recent year for which data is available for all countries analysed. Reuters obtained exclusive access to the calculations.
Norway’s Ministry of Climate and Environment said it is up to other nations to manage their own carbon footprints. Officials at the environment and climate ministries of
Canada and Australia did not comment.
Addressing the summit in Azerbaijan, host President Ilham Aliyev accused some Western politicians of double standards for lecturing his government about its oil and gas use, saying, “They better look at themselves.”
With Reuters inputs
