How a grassroots UK campaign sparked a multi-billion-dollar exit from public fossil fuel finance

In 2021, dozens of governments quietly agreed to stop using public money to finance fossil fuel projects overseas.

Their pledge – now known as the Clean Energy Transition Partnership (CETP) – has helped drive a 78% reduction in public finance for fossil fuel projects among signatory countries.

What makes this especially striking is where the idea came from: a grassroots campaign in the UK initially targeting the government’s export credit agency.

With governments withdrawing from climate commitments, and some administrations – most notably Trump’s – tying them to security and trade deals, international climate cooperation is increasingly fragile. Yet the CETP stands out as a genuine success among a litany of failed international climate initiatives. My new research set out to understand what made it such a success.

Climate policy (and campaigning) is messy

Many assume that international climate commitments emerge from polite diplomatic negotiations, with small changes accumulating over time. The reality is far messier. Domestic and international climate policy is fiercely contested and victories are only ever provisional, with each settlement shaping the terrain for the next battle.

My research, based on interviews with campaigners and policymakers, shows that the partnership came about through a series of political confrontations – “battle-settlement events” in the academic lingo – moments when activists, governments and institutions clashed and new compromises emerged.

The CETP traces back to a UK grassroots campaign from 2017 onwards led by environmental and human rights campaign organisations including Global Witness and Oil Change International, partly inspired by a parallel European push targeting the European Investment Bank over its fossil fuel financing.

Campaigners initially pushed for a full fossil fuel phase out. However, they soon switched to a more strategic target: UK Export Finance (UKEF). They saw this as a more achievable battle that would provoke less resistance from industry and politicians.

UKEF is a government agency that helps UK companies sell goods and services abroad. It provides loans, guarantees or insurance to reduce the financial risk of exporting.

Campaigners built up evidence and pushed parliament to investigate. The resulting 2019 House of Commons committee report found that 96% of UK Export Finance’s energy sector support went to fossil fuel projects, predominantly in low- and middle-income countries, and called for a halt by 2021. Despite these damning findings, Theresa May’s government initially refused to budge.

So campaigners upped the ante. They drew attention to the contradiction between the UK’s climate leadership rhetoric and its public funding of fossil fuel projects linked to conflict and displacement overseas. Former UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon weighed in to urge the UK to “recalibrate its export finance policy”, while activists from the climate campaign group Extinction Rebellion covered the Treasury in red paint to symbolise its claims the government was complicit in violence and suffering. People I interviewed who were involved at the time said this created “insurmountable pressure” on the government to act.

The Cop spotlight

The announcement in August 2019 that Glasgow would host a major UN climate summit transformed the campaign. The summit, known as Cop26, became an opportunity to both expose the gap between UK climate ambition and its export policy, and to use any domestic win as a launchpad for coordinated international action.

The government felt it too. The then prime minister, Boris Johnson, wanted to use the summit to cement his image as a climate-friendly conservative, and a restructured “Cop Unit” within the Cabinet Office had genuine agency to develop ambitious policy ideas and secure buy-in across government.

Though Cop26 was delayed until 2021 due to COVID, this gave campaigners more time to build internal support and sustain the narrative that the UK government was a “climate hypocrite” in reputable outlets like the Financial Times and The Times. Johnson’s government eventually conceded, announcing a unilateral ban on public finance for overseas fossil fuel projects in December 2020. Given that his government was simultaneously consumed by Brexit and internal power struggles, it was a massive achievement.

Glasgow and beyond

With the UK ban secured, attention turned to getting other countries on board. The Cop Unit used the UK’s diplomatic relationships to convince other governments to make similar commitments at Cop26, pointing to the UK ban as proof of concept.

On the conference floor, campaigners and UK officials played ambitious governments off each other in a spirit of friendly competition. Those I interviewed for my research noted that some countries signed up before fully understanding what was required, causing some delegations to get a shock when they realised.

As the summit closed, 34 countries and five public finance institutions signed the Glasgow Statement on aligning international public finance with climate change goals. Signatories to this statement, which would go on to become the CETP, included major fossil fuel funders like Canada and the US.

Walking the talk

Then came the hard part. Keeping up momentum meant regular meetings with signatories to troubleshoot implementation, while domestically the initiative had to survive an attempt by Liz Truss’s short-lived government to kill it altogether. That threat was repelled, and arguably strengthened the initiative by reinforcing signatories’ commitment.

Implementation remains uneven. Most signatories have ended or curtailed fossil fuel finance, and the CETP has cut between US$11.3 billion (8.4 billion) and US$16.3 billion in annual public finance to fossil fuel production.

But the critical counterpart – scaling up public finance for clean energy – has lagged badly. The CETP’s own data shows clean energy financing actually fell between 2022 and 2023. The US has since exited under Trump and some signatories, including Italy and Switzerland, are still way behind on both stopping fossil finance and scaling up finance for renewables.

Yet the CETP’s impact is real. It has redirected tens of billions away from projects that would have locked in fossil fuel infrastructure for decades, and demonstrated that coordinated civil society pressure can shift both domestic policy and international norms. In a political environment where climate ambition is being systematically dismantled, that matters.

The partnership’s future is uncertain. But its journey – from a small UK campaign targeting export finance to a global coalition of governments – shows that domestic activism can still lead to ambitious and durable policy change.

Freddie Daley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.