The international climate conference’s “energy day” dawned with fresh efforts to block the flow of money to fossil fuel companies, as activists brushed aside arguments from corporate leaders of coal, oil and gas firms that they need to help meet the energy needs of consumers over the next three decades.

Here’s what to know
  • Thursday’s sessions are focused on how to clean up the energy sector and help fossil-fuel-intensive countries transition to cleaner energy sources.
  • Campaigners said that major emitters such as China and the United States still needed to do more to reduce domestic fossil fuel projects.
  • After world leaders flew home, negotiators on Tuesday began the delicate process of hammering out how to pay for the pledges to reduce greenhouse gases and transition to cleaner technologies.

GLASGOW, Scotland — The United States and 20 other countries announced Thursday that starting next year they would stop spending tax dollars to support international fossil fuel projects, a move the group said would divert $18 billion a year toward clean energy. The pledge comes just a day after even more nations agreed to restrict public financing for coal power.

The decision to curb public spending on fossil fuels — which came as negotiations were underway at a major U.N. climate conference in Glasgow — will further restrict investments in drilling, power plants and other projects by international development banks and other publicly funded institutions.

“The presumption has to be that direct finance and public finance toward energy in developing countries around the world has to be in the clean and green area,” John Morton, climate counselor for the U.S. Treasury Department, said at the announcement of the initiative on Thursday.

The new measures are the latest of several new targets that the International Energy Agency said could meaningfully alter the trajectory of global warming. The IEA’s executive director Fatih Birol said Thursday that if the new targets “are met in full and on time, they would be enough to hold the rise in global temperatures to 1.8 degrees Celsius [2.7 degrees Fahrenheit] by the end of the century.”

That marks an improvement in the agency’s normally glum assessments, and Birol called it a “landmark moment.” The IEA director credited measures taken since mid-October, including Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s strengthening of the country’s 2030 targets, its pledge to hit net zero emissions by 2070, and the pledge by several other large economies to reach net zero emissions. Birol also said that another key factor was that more than 100 countries had promised to cut emissions of methane 30 percent by 2030.