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enough

(13,237 posts)
Thu Dec 8, 2016, 08:33 PM Dec 2016

Agency inside the Obama administration poured billions into fossil fuel projects 2009-2015

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/nov/30/us-fossil-fuel-investment-obama-climate-change-legacysnip>

Asaf Shalev, Michael Phillis, Elah Feder and Susanne Rust
Wednesday 30 November 2016 07.00 EST The Guardian

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Since January 2009, the US Export-Import Bank has signed almost $34bn worth of low-interest loans and guarantees to companies and foreign governments to build, expand and promote fossil fuel projects abroad. That’s about three times more financing than the taxpayer-backed bank provided during George W Bush’s two terms, and almost twice the amount financed with loans and guarantees under the administrations of Ronald Reagan, George HW Bush and Bill Clinton – combined.

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Since 2009, it has financed 70 fossil fuel projects. When they are all completed and operating at full capacity, the bank estimates they will push 164m metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year – about the same output as the 95 currently operating coal-fired power plants in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Oklahoma.

That number does not include emissions from the numerous foundries, mines and smelters the bank also has financed around the world since 2009, nor does it include more than 600 transactions listed in the bank’s authorization database, in which the product or export is labeled as “N/A”, making it impossible to estimate the true size and extent of the bank’s carbon footprint.

The findings come after Guardian US and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism’s Energy & Environmental Reporting Project spent almost six months viewing documents and data released under the Freedom of Information Act. The investigation team studied tens of thousands of bank transactions, interviewed dozens of sources, and examined scores of government, watchdog and academic reports showing how the 82-year-old bank has undercut the president’s environmental legacy.

snip> much more at link
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