Doubling Back and Doubling Down: G20 scorecard on fossil fuel funding

The methodology note describes a comprehensive framework for scoring G20 countries on their support for fossil fuels, covering direct budget transfers, tax expenditures, price support, public finance, and state-owned enterprise (SOE) investment. It details seven indicators—transparency, pledges, and the scale of support for coal, oil and gas, power, and end-use, plus overall progress—to assess whether governments are meeting climate commitments. The framework specifically includes an analysis of public money commitments made in response to the COVID-19 crisis up to August 12, 2020.

• The report defines 'government support' broadly to include five distinct types of financial flows and policy measures: direct budget transfers and tax expenditures, consumer price support (induced transfers), public finance (such as loans and guarantees), state-owned enterprise (SOE) investment, and public money commitments specifically made in response to the COVID-19 crisis.
• The scoring system utilizes seven indicators to evaluate G20 countries: transparency (Indicator 1), pledges and commitments (Indicator 2), and the scale of support for four specific stages of fossil fuel activity: coal (Indicator 3), oil and gas (Indicator 4), fossil fuel-based power (Indicator 5), and end-use by industry, transport, and households (Indicator 6). Indicator 7 measures overall progress in ending support.
• To ensure comparability between economies of different sizes, quantitative indicators for government support are normalized by dividing the financial values by the country's annual GDP.
• The overall report score is heavily weighted toward progress; Indicators 1 through 6 each carry a 10% weight, while Indicator 7 (progress in ending support) is allocated a 40% weight.
• The analysis of COVID-19 recovery packages captures both conditional and unconditional support, noting that some governments made support conditional on climate targets or pollution-reduction requirements, such as France's bailout of Air France.
• The report identifies significant data gaps and transparency issues, noting that the lack of available subnational data and the absence of reporting from certain countries—such as the lack of OECD data on direct transfers for Saudi Arabia—likely lead to an underestimation of total government support.

APA

Geddes, A., Gerasimchuk, I., Viswanathan, B., Picciariello, A., Tucker, B., Doukas, A., Corkal, V., Mostafa, M., Roth, J., Suharsono, A., & Gençsü, I. (2020). Doubling Back and Doubling Down: G20 scorecard on fossil fuel funding. International Institute for Sustainable Development. https://www.iisd.org/system/files/2020-11/g20-scorecard-methodology.pdf

Chicago

Geddes, Anna, Ivetta Gerasimchuk, Balasubramanian Viswanathan, Angela Picciariello, Bronwen Tucker, Alex Doukas, Vanessa Corkal, et al. Doubling Back and Doubling Down: G20 scorecard on fossil fuel funding. International Institute for Sustainable Development, 2020. https://www.iisd.org/system/files/2020-11/g20-scorecard-methodology.pdf.

Wikipedia

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BibTeX

@techreport{geddes2020doubling, author = {Geddes, Anna and Gerasimchuk, Ivetta and Viswanathan, Balasubramanian and Picciariello, Angela and Tucker, Bronwen and Doukas, Alex and Corkal, Vanessa and Mostafa, Mostafa and Roth, Joachim and Suharsono, Anissa and Gençsü, Ipek}, title = {{Doubling Back and Doubling Down: G20 scorecard on fossil fuel funding}}, institution = {International Institute for Sustainable Development}, year = {2020}, month = nov, url = {https://www.iisd.org/system/files/2020-11/g20-scorecard-methodology.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }