It’s time to exit the Energy Charter Treaty

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Hi John,

This week is crunch time for the Energy Charter Treaty. That’s the climate-wrecking corporate court agreement that several fossil fuel companies are already using to sue governments over climate action. Member countries are meeting on Friday for a long-awaited decision point: whether to recommit to this dangerous treaty in the vain hope that it can be ‘modernised’ or whether to exit.

For the past two years, countries have been trying to agree proposals to modernise the ECT and make it compatible with with international climate goals and the Paris Agreement. But this process has failed. Nothing on the table will align the ECT with climate goals.

To remove the threat that the ECT poses for climate action, countries need to leave, now.

Can you tell your MP that the UK should exit the Energy Charter Treaty and ask them to put pressure on the trade and energy ministers?

Email your MP today

To avoid devastating climate breakdown we need to keep fossil fuels in the ground. That means cancelling oil, gas and coal projects in the pipeline right now and phasing out existing fossil fuels. But by giving fossil fuel companies the power to sue when projects are cancelled, the ECT is a real and dangerous threat to the UK’s ability to take steps towards a clean energy transition.

UN climate scientists warned in the most recent IPCC report of the risk of investor-state dispute settlement (the corporate courts contained in the ECT) "being able to be used by fossil-fuel companies to block national legislation aimed at phasing out the use of their assets", highlighting the ECT. [1]

The proposals to modernise the ECT will not prevent this. They are weak and will continue to protect fossil fuels for years. They also don’t come close to changing the fundamentally unjust nature of corporate courts.

It’s now or never to make it clear to our leaders that with the risk of eye-wateringly high investor claims for compensation, the ECT can have no place in UK trade and climate policy. The UK and other countries need to exit the ECT as part of a coordinated withdrawal.

Our campaigning on corporate courts is having an impact, with awareness of these secretive, undemocratic tribunals growing. We want to encourage as many MPs as possible to put pressure on ministers of the Departments of International Trade and of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy as this decision point approaches.

Tell your MP: if the UK government is at all serious about its ambitions to be a climate leader, it must confirm that it will not recommit to the self-sabotaging and climate-wrecking Energy Charter Treaty.

Email your MP

Thank you for everything you do to help drive this urgent issue up the agenda.

Cleodie Rickard,
Trade campaigner, Global Justice Now

[1] IPCC, Climate change 2022: mitigation of climate change. 2022, p14-81

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