Paper Published in Nature Communications

Over the past few decades, public export credit agencies and export-import banks (here ECAs) have de-risked and facilitated the development of energy projects worldwide.  ECAs are state-backed agencies that help national exporters finance deals abroad by providing guarantees or loans. For over a century, they have played an important role in global trade, particularly in large-scale infrastructure projects - from oil and gas pipelines to refineries and power plants. As the urgency to reduce greenhouse gas emissions grows, ECAs are being increasingly called upon to support the shift to renewable energy worldwide. However, while ECAs handle financing volumes on a par with multilateral development banks such as the World Bank, the scope and direction of their energy investments have largely remained opaque.

Led by Philipp Censkowsky (HEC Lausanne), the researchers analyzed close to 1,000 transactions between 2013 and 2023 that financed energy-related infrastructure and were supported by ECAs using commercial transaction data provided by TXF Limited. The study offers the first comprehensive analysis of ECA energy deals on a near-global scope, and highlights three important findings:

Global support for renewables is accelerating, driven mostly by European countries, but fossil fuels, especially oil and gas, continue to draw substantial ECA support.

There are important policy disparities within OECD countries as well as non-OECD countries, such as China, which requires an agreement at the OECD (where ECA terms and conditions are negotiated) as well as the relaunch of the International Working Group on export finance.

The ‘greening’ of ECA portfolios is to the detriment of support for energy projects in developing countries, an unintended side consequence of shifting to renewables that requires to reconsider ECA mandates to foster a just energy transition globally.

The full paper can be accessed on the publisher’s website (open access): https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-55981-0

An accompanying blog post is available here:

https://communities.springernature.com/posts/quantifying-the-shift-of-public-export-finance-from-fossil-fuels-to-renewable-energy

This work benefitted from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 and the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (P.W. and B.S.).

Photo Credit @ Kris Krüg on Flickr. Sunrise at Fort McMurray, Alberta (Canada).