No more play pretend: PMCJ demands true transition in ACEF, ending fossil fuel finance from ADB and big climate polluters

Media Communications
Jun 3
4 min read

Updated: 5 days ago

Quezon City, Philippines — The 20th Asia Clean Energy Forum (ACEF), happening from June 2 to 6, 2025, convenes stakeholders to discuss commitments and solutions to the urgent global need to move away from dirty energy sources that plunged the planet into the current climate crisis.

Promoting itself as the Asia and the Pacific’s Climate Bank, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) plays the role of being a champion of change for clean energy, yet has a decades-long legacy of funding dirty and deadly coal plants in the region. This contradiction is a clear backsliding from the ADB’s commitment to the climate targets. On top of these questionable financing portfolios, ADB continues to ignore the harm and danger of its projects affecting the communities and the environment, raising alarms about ADB’s credibility in delivering a true just transition in Asia.

For 20 years, the ADB has organized the ACEF to shape the region’s clean energy agenda. With “Empowering the future: Clean energy innovations, regional cooperation and integration, and financing solutions” as this year’s theme, Elle Bartolome, Philippine Movement for Climate Justice (PMCJ) Senior Executive Officer for Policy, Campaigns, and Communications, said that despite this two-decade history and yearly commitment, in 2024 the world has seen an all-time high in the use of fossil fuels, and Southeast Asia met the entirety of the region’s 3.6 percent rise in electricity demand last year through fossil fuels.

“Undeniably, this is business-as-usual. Financial institutions like the ADB, shelling out loans and supporting construction and expansions of fossil fuel infrastructure, are a direct attempt to finance a fossil-fuel dependent future,” Bartolome added.

In the Philippines, the ADB has funded various coal projects and expansions, including coal plants in Zambales and Cebu, leading to the detriment and suffering of communities around these plants. While it claims to advocate for a clean energy transition and accelerate coal phaseout, its Energy Transition Mechanism (ETM) reveals significant gaps and misdirections in its policies, which lack accountability-seeking from coal polluters. This essentially rewards them and results in prolonged suffering for communities under their projects.

PMCJ National Coordinator Ian Rivera said that for decades, ADB has been profiting from dirty energy, deaths and destruction, should not be allowed to continue operations. “It is long overdue for ADB to be shut down. It never served the purpose of development for Asia. It put countries to indebtedness through loans disguised as development and clean energy. These loans should not be honored and paid,” he added.

“The ADB-ETM’s loopholes actually support the longer sustenance of coal plants instead of their immediate shutdown. It allows the repurposing of other fossil fuels and false solutions like fossil gas and ammonia co-firing. This extends fossil fuel dependency and puts corporate financial incentives over and above reparations for affected community members affected by these coal plants. Simply put, the ADB’s efforts in transitioning are unreliable and insufficient,” Bartolome added.

This is especially obvious as the ACEF still provides a platform to some of the culprits of climate crimes committed in the country. In 2011, the Freedom from Debt Coalition Cebu Chapter filed a complaint on behalf of affected communities against the ADB for funding the Visayas Base-Load Power Development Project, a private sector project of Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO) - Salcon Power Corp. (KSPC). The 200-Megawatt coal-fired power plant in Naga, Cebu, Philippines, was co-financed by the ADB and the Export-Import Bank of Korea (KEXIM). A direct loan of $120 million was provided to KSPC.

In 2012, the Compliance Review Panel of the ADB revealed that the loan provided to KSPC was non-compliant with its own policies on environment, public consultation and information disclosure, and energy.

Nearly 15 years since the complaint, justice remains elusive to the communities. PMCJ’s recent documentation reported that communities have experienced significant losses in fish catch, a rise in health issues, and severe environmental degradation since the coal plant was built. Estela Vasquez, PMCJ Visayas Coordinator, said, “There aren’t many choices left for people in the communities in Naga. Aside from being surrounded by industrial structures that pollute their air and seas, the coal plant’s continuing and worsening impacts have severely upended their lives.“

The Standard Chartered Bank (SCB), a financier of coal plants and expansions in the country and an ADB accomplice to environmental crimes, will also be present in the forum. In 2024, PMCJ, together with Inclusive Development International (IDI), Recourse, and BankTrack, filed a complaint with the SCB for their indirect funding of four coal plants and to seek justice for the affected communities they neglected in their insatiable pursuit of profit. While the case remains pending, the SCB must be reminded that commitments for clean energy transition remain empty without accountability for its indirect funding of the coal plants in Zambales, Bataan, and Davao.

Residents near the coal plant in Limay, Bataan, told PMCJ of the environmental and health problems they face due to the plant's operations. These include skin conditions like rashes and respiratory problems like asthma. The community also endured security threats and house evictions to make way for the coal plant expansion.

“We seek a complete and immediate phaseout of all coal and other fossil fuels. As the ACEF proceeds, the ADB and other international finance institutions must be confronted with the strings of human rights violations and the destruction of the environment. They are exacerbating the crisis. The utterly disastrous effects of the climate crisis are becoming heavier, as each year becomes unprecedented in breaking the record for the hottest year. The time is now to stop financing these coal plants and stop financing our deaths and destruction,” Rivera added. ###

#ACEF2025 #EndCoal #FossilFuelPhaseOut #JustTransitionNow #ClimateJusticeNow