Highlighting the hypocrisy: fossil fuel export emissions

By Sofia Gonzales-Zuniga, Danial Riaz and Mia Moisio

In November 2023 at COP28, governments agreed to “transition away” from fossil fuels in the energy sector and reconfirmed this decision at the UN General Assembly in September 2024.

But several countries’ actions are inconsistent with these agreements: particularly around the issue of fossil fuel exports. The fossil fuel production industry – which can generate significant domestic revenue – is not a party to international agreements, and emissions from fossil fuel exports are not covered by the national emissions accounting of the exporting country. This leads to a situation where rather than the well-established “polluter pays principle”, polluters are profiting from pollution.

The top 10 fossil fuel exporting countries represent around 60% of the total exported fossil fuel emissions (see figure below, data for 2022).

Russia has the largest absolute contribution to exported emissions, with significant levels of oil and gas exports, as well as coal. Australia and Indonesia stand out because of their large coal exports; the US produces the largest share of emissions from gas exports, and Saudi Arabia from oil exports.

The top six countries (Russia, Australia, US, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Canada) represent 50% of total exported emissions. These countries have a key role to play in enabling a rapid transition away from fossil fuels. While the buyers of these fuels need to reduce demand, the fossil fuel export business model is not in line with the goal of “transitioning away” from fossil fuels.

There are a number of countries who claim to be taking strong climate action, but whose exported emissions are larger than their domestic emissions: Norway and Australia are standouts, but this is also important for Azerbaijan, Saudi Arabia, Canada and the UAE (see figure below, data for 2022).

The US stands out in a different way: its domestic emissions are also substantial, and its exported emissions have significantly increased over the past decade. What is abundantly clear is that there is little effort going into reducing fossil fuel exports as part of climate action.

Australia, Canada, Norway, the US and the UK are all reducing domestic emissions under current policies, but their fossil fuel exports either remain constant, or are increasing. In Canada, emissions from exported fossil fuels have surpassed domestic emissions since 2015 and show no sign of dropping, while Norway and the US have some of the highest rates of growth in exported emissions.

• The US is expected to significantly increase its production and exports of both oil and gas to 2050 (US EIA 2023). While coal production is expected to decrease, the US still plans to increase coal exports by 2050 above current levels.
• Norway expects its oil and gas production to increase until 2025 but still plans to produce a significant amount of both fuels in 2050 (Norwegian Petroleum 2024, PGR 2023).
• Australian coal exports are rebounding after several years of supply disruptions, and are projected to remain elevated near record-high levels until at least the end of the decade (DCCEEW, 2024). Australia plans to continue exporting gas and sees LNG exports playing a clear role to 2050 and even beyond (DISR, 2024).

Unless these industrialised countries agree to stop exporting emissions, the world will not be able to meet the fossil fuel phase-out that governments have agreed.

The EU deserves a special mention: while it doesn't export fossil fuels, in the wake of Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine, several of its member states went shopping for fossil gas imports, for example from Azerbaijan, encouraging exporters to increase their supply.

It’s time to hold fossil fuel exporters accountable in the transition to net zero emissions. The CAT will be taking a closer look at this when rating the new 2035 climate pledges in 2025.

Method:

• We calculated the emissions from fossil fuel exports, starting from 2010.
• Data on exported emissions was taken from IEA WEB 2024 with a focus on the year 2022 (due to data completeness).
• Note that we categorise oil as a combination of crude and refined oil.
• Emissions factors were taken from the IPCC.
• The current policy scenarios are from the Climate Action Tracker country profiles.