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Jun 24, 2025

Private Fantasies, Public Realities: Why private finance isn’t delivering an energy transition and the case for public sector leadership - Oil Change International

Private Fantasies, Public Realities: Why private finance isn’t delivering an energy transition and the case for public sector leadership details how governments’ dominant “private-sector first”

Private Fantasies, Public Realities: Why private finance isn’t delivering an energy transition and the case for public sector leadership details how governments’ dominant “private-sector first” approach to financing a just energy transition is prolonging the fossil fuel era. An over-reliance on weak incentives to attract private finance is failing to deliver the scale, distribution, and quality of investment needed.

This report Private Fantasies, Public Realities: Why private finance isn’t delivering an energy transition and the case for public sector leadership details how governments’ dominant “private-sector first” approach to financing a just energy transition is prolonging the fossil fuel era. An over-reliance on weak incentives to attract private finance is failing to deliver the scale, distribution, and quality of investment needed. The biggest shortfalls are in Global South countries and in key “enabling” sectors like energy efficiency and fair fossil fuel phase-out programs, which are receiving less than a ⅓ of the global annual investment needed.

To address this, governments need to take a much more active role in coordinating and investing in the just energy transition. In particular, Global North governments with the most responsibility for the climate crisis must stop blocking reforms to outdated global financial rules that are limiting many countries’ options to act.

Download the full Report here.

Download the Report Methodology here.

Key findings:

This report has been co-published with the following organizations: 350.org, Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development, BankTrack, Big Shift Global, CAN-International, Center for Biological Diversity, Center for International Environmental Law, Christian Aid, Debt Justice, EcoEquity, Environment Governance Institute, Environment Governance Institute Uganda, MenaFem Movement for Economic Development and Ecological Justice, Recourse, Solutions For Our Climate (SFOC), Stamp Out Poverty, Trend Asia, Women’s Environment and Development Organization (WEDO).

Read the Press Release here.