Civil society leaders staged a protest action in front of the Japanese Embassy in Manila on October 28, 2025, just as the 3rd Asia Zero Emission Community (AZEC) Summit was held last October 26 in Kuala Lumpur during the ASEAN Summit.
They called on Japan’s new Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi, to end the country’s financing of fossil fuels and stop obstructing Asia’s transition to renewable energy.
Similar protests were also held in front of Japanese embassies in Malaysia, Indonesia, and Australia, denouncing Japan’s leadership of the AZEC alliance, which they said promotes fossil fuel dependence rather than genuine decarbonization.
In a joint statement signed by 33 organizations, civil society groups called on Prime Minister Takaichi and ASEAN leaders to “take steps to ensure that AZEC becomes a genuine platform for accelerating the region’s clean energy future, not a vehicle to prolong fossil fuel use and corporate profits.”
“Japan is the world’s largest public financier of fossil fuels, and it is using AZEC to perpetuate fossil fuel dependence at the expense of energy security and public health in Southeast Asia,” said Lidy Nacpil, coordinator of the Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development (APMDD) and the Asian Energy Network (AEN).
Nacpil explained that “AZEC publicly brands itself as a clean energy initiative committed to zero emissions, but its actual agenda supports the expansion of fossil fuels through investment in liquefied natural gas (LNG), ammonia and hydrogen co-firing, and carbon capture and storage (CCS), which are technologies that pose environmental, economic, and social risks.”
According to APMDD, CCS is widely regarded as unproven and has a track record of failure due to high costs, low capture rates, technical problems, and economic underperformance.
“Many proposed projects have been cancelled, while operating ones have chronically underperformed, with some even being used to produce more oil instead of reducing emissions,” Nacpil added.
Photo credit: Jason Valenzuela