At least 19 countries, including large investors such as the United States or Canada, and financial institutions have thus undertaken to put an end by the end of 2022 to the financing abroad of fossil energy projects without carbon capture techniques.

"Investing in fossil fuel projects left as they are carries increasing social and economic risks", write the signatories in a joint statement.

The G20 nations agreed only recently to stop supporting coal-fired power plant projects abroad.

But the plan announced Thursday includes gas and oil for the first time, and promises to redirect that money towards renewable energy.

If this commitment is kept, more than $ 15 billion should benefit clean energy, experts say.

In another initiative, promoted by the British government, more than forty countries have committed to a "declaration of transition from coal to clean energy", several of which had already made similar commitments, such as Poland or the United Kingdom. France, already very little involved in coal.

However, large countries involved in the sector - Australia, China, India, United States, Japan or Russia - are not among the signatories.

Schkopau coal-fired power station in eastern Germany on January 16, 2020 Hendrik Schmidt dpa / AFP / Archives

On the other hand, the two initiatives have members with very relative international economic weight - Maldives, Marshall Islands, Fiji, Mali and Nepal.

Wales is also counted separately in the list of signatories on coal, of which it was a major producer, alongside the United Kingdom of which it is nevertheless a part ...

The organizers cited as an example the agreement announced earlier at the COP whereby Germany, the United States, France, the United Kingdom and the European Union pledged to finance a "just energy transition", to the tune of $ 8.5 billion, to help South Africa overcome its dependence on coal for energy.

Johannesburg is not, however, a signatory of the coal agreement.

The British hosts nevertheless showed their enthusiasm, like Alok Sharma, president of COP26 for whom "we are coming to the moment when we are sending coal back to the history books".

Good side of history

"We have to put public funding on the right side of history," said UK Secretary of State for Business Greg Hands.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), to be able to preserve the ideal objective of the Paris Agreement of a warming contained at + 1.5 ° C compared to the pre-industrial era, it would be necessary immediately cease all funding for new fossil fuel projects.

British Secretary of State for Enterprise Greg Hands, speaking at COP26 in Glasgow, November 4, 2021 DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS AFP

However, according to the NGO Oil Change International, between 2018 and 2020, the G20 countries alone financed such projects to the tune of 188 billion dollars, mainly via multilateral development banks.

After commitments to reduce methane emissions by 30% at the start of the week, many observers nevertheless considered that it was a new "step in the right direction", like Tasneem Essop , director of Climate Action Network International.

"The IPCC is perfectly clear: to avoid a climate disaster we must put an end to our addiction to fossil fuels, and the elimination of funding is an essential step forward", summarized Jennifer Layke, of the World Resources Institute.

Especially since a scientific study, published on the occasion of the COP, reminded us of the cold reality of the figures: despite the air gap of the Covid-19 pandemic, which had greatly reduced CO2 emissions in 2020, the movement is already on the rise.

According to the Global carbon project, these emissions will have rebounded in 2021 to less than 1% of their record level of 2019, leaving less and less time to meet the target of + 1.5 ° C.

And the very majority source of CO2 production, the main greenhouse gas, is precisely the combustion of fossil fuels.

© 2021 AFP