How Japan’s financing of highly polluting overseas coal plants endangers public health.
Plants abroad, that emit far more toxic air pollutants than would be allowed in Japan. This deadly double standard in emission limits allows Japanese-financed coal power plants to emit up to 13 times more nitrogen oxides (NOx ), 33 times more sulfur dioxide (SO2 ) and 40 times more dust than those plants built in Japan.
The findings, released in a joint Greenpeace Southeast Asia and Greenpeace Japan report, reveal that the public finance agencies’ 16.7 billion USD investment in coal plants between January 2013 and May 2019 is estimated to cause a total of 148,000 to 410,000 avoidable premature deaths over the typical 30 year operation period of such plants.