Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Sign In | Register | Text Size
Search
| Home | Analysis | Changemakers | Books & Reports | Features | Agenda | Contact Us | About Us | Submit Content | Network | February 17, 2010
Home > Environment > Related Analysis
Education
Environment
Governance
Health
HIV/AIDS
Human Rights
Livelihoods
Media
The World Bank is to review its energy strategy in 2010, soon after the Copenhagen talks to hammer out a Microcredit
post2012 framework and identify key players in mitigating and adapting to climate change.
Population
The World Bank Group, backed by G8 countries, will emerge as a key player in global climate change fund
management post2012. Senior officials at the Bank have indicated that they will wait until Copenhagen to Poverty
finalise the Bank’s role. It’s quite clear though that the Bank’s role will be significant; it’s the details that we
will get to know later. Right to Information
The G77 block of developing countries and civil society groups oppose this move, demanding that the UN Trade & Development
be given overall charge of managing mitigation and adaptation programmes.
Technology
In this context, the Bank’s review of its energy strategy gains importance. The Bank’s energy sector lending
was more than $8 billion in 2009. In October 2009, it released an approach paper for the review exercise; it
Urban India
will take more than a year to come out with a new strategy. The review will debate the Bank’s existing energy
policy. Energy being critically linked to climate change, the review process has important ramifications for
Water Resources
global climate change management.
Between January and May 2010, civil society groups will participate in the review process; there are already Women
a number of groups lobbying the Bank to make drastic cuts in its lending to climate changecausing fossil
fuelbased projects. A new strategy may be ready by April 2011.
Microsites
It is pertinent therefore to review the Bank’s earlier lending to fossil fuelbased projects and to prepare a
balance sheet of their carbonemitting potential. This may explain the ‘key’ role that is being given to the Toxic Tours
World Bank by developed countries.
Film Forum
A thick carbon trail
Defining Development
The Bank’s own carbon trail is thick and getting denser by the year. The Bank’s lending for fossil fuels a
major source of greenhouse gases (GHGs) that cause global warming has more than doubled in the last Kids for Change
decade (see Table 1). Emissions from Banksupported projects will emit around 7% of the world’s total
annual carbon dioxide (CO2) in their lifetime. Meanwhile, the Bank’s lending for renewable energy has Globalisation
neither been impressive nor on a par with that for fossil fuels.
MDG 2015
Contrary to its mandate of helping developing countries transit to a lowcarbon economy, the Bank’s lending
policy has ensured that these countries remain carbonintensive for at least 2040 more years. Most of the Videos
lending has been done to offset high GHG emissions by developed countries.
Social Studies
Since 1998, the Bank’s lending for fossil fuels has been rising at an unprecedented rate. The increase was
the sharpest during 2006 and 2008. In 2008, its spending on fossil fuels was 48% higher than that in 2000,
by $ 1 billion. During 20062008, the Bank reported a consecutive increase in lending for fossil fuels (see
Table 2 and Table 3). The Washingtonbased Bank Information Centre (BIC), a credible civil society group Newsletter
that monitors multilateral development banks like the World Bank, has calculated that when fossil fuels Name
involved in World Bank (and its private sector lending arm, the International Finance Corporation)lending
Email
infochangeindia.org/…/Carbon-dating-t… 1/4
2/18/2010 InfoChange India News & Features dev…
projects for 2008 are combusted, the project lifetime carbon dioxide emissions would amount to Email
approximately 2,072 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide. That’s around 7% of the world’s total annual
carbon emissions from the energy sector; more than twice as much as all of Africa’s annual energy sector Subscribe
emissions.
“Clearly, the World Bank’s investments in fossil fuelbased energy are significant to climate change, and yet
none of its current climate change initiatives adequately incentivise for a reduction in financing for fossil
fuels,” says a BIC report that assessed the Bank’s carbon trail.
Syndicate
In another estimate, the World Wide Fund for NatureUK’s ‘World Bank Carbon Footprint Report’ of 2008,
using some data from the Bank’s 2008 lending, found that, since 1997, the Bank had financed a total of
over 26 giga tonnes worth, or 26,000 million metric tonnes (MMT), of carbon emissions. This means a
yearly financing of 2,600 MMT of carbon emissions per year around 9% of the annual world total for energy
sector emissions. Add this page to your
favorite Social Bookmarking
Not bankable websites
Notwithstanding this huge carbon financing, the World Bank Group has been assuming a proactive role in
climate change mitigation and has set a deadline for low carbon lending. In 1991, it took up an
implementing role for the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the financial mechanism for the UN
Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Its energy sector strategy of 2001 set a deadline of
2010 for reducing the average intensity of CO2 emissions from energy production, from 2.90 tonnes of oil
equivalent to 2.75 for developing and transition countries.
In June 2004, in response to its own extractive industries review at the International Renewable Energies
Conference in Bonn, the Bank committed to scaling up lending for new renewable energy and energy
efficiency by at least 20% annually over five years, ie 200509. The review suggested that the Bank phase
out coal and oil financing. In 2006, responding to a request from G8 countries, the Bank developed a clean
energy investment framework intended to help scale up investments in clean energy and integrate climate
change into development assistance. It has a specific objective of promoting a transition to low carbon
emissions.
In October 2008, the Bank approved a new strategic framework on development and climate change that
gives it a bigger role in climate change issues. Under this, the Bank has more than US$ 6 billion
commitments from various countries to manage specially set up climate investment funds.
Renewed zeal for carbon
A closer look at the Bank’s lending for fossil fuels, climatefriendly renewable energy and energy efficiency
projects throws up the true facts: there is a greater tilt towards carbon lending than towards cleaner energy
projects. The Bank’s fossil fuel lending is twice that for new renewables and energy efficiency combined,
and five times more than for new renewables if it is considered alone. In the last three years, the Bank has
lent 19% more for coal than for new renewable energy.
In 2008, the World Bank and the IFC increased lending for fossil fuels by 102%, compared with only 11% for
new renewable energy such as solar, wind, biomass, geothermal energy and hydropower facilities with
capacities of up to 10 MW per facility. The threeyear average (200508) indicates that the Bank’s funding for
fossil fuels and new renewable energy increased at 615% and 58% respectively.
“Bank lending to coal projects will make lowcarbon transition difficult given that coal emits almost twice as
much carbon as natural gas per unit of energy,” says the BIC assessment. Lending for coalbased projects
has registered a whopping 648% increase in the last three years.
The Bank claims much of its coal lending is climatefriendly. It goes by its own definition of clean ‘low
carbon emitting’ technology. According to the Bank’s definition, a coal project may be designated ‘low
carbon’ when it is a highefficiency coalfired thermal plant such as supercritical and ultrasupercritical.
Such projects are brought into the energyefficiency category that, in turn, comes under the Bank’s low
carbon lending category.
Similarly, under renewable lending the Bank supports hydropower projects that may not emit carbon but
trigger largescale environmental degradation and human displacement. The Bank has lent US$ 1.007
billion towards hydropower projects with capacities of more than 10 MW per facility. Large hydropower
projects account for a major part of the renewable numbers and are up substantially from US$ 751 million
in 2006 to US$ 1.007 billion in 2007. Similarly, the Bank’s energy efficiency lending has gone up from $ 262
million in 2006 to $ 1.192 billion in 2007. Its definition of ‘energy efficiency’ includes both the supply and
demand sides; supply side efficiency includes retrofits of hydropower and coal plants.
In the IFC, new investments overall total $ 16.2 billion in 2008, a 34% increase over the previous year. For
the same year, the increase in IFC fossil fuel investments considerably exceeded the overall portfolio rate,
by over 250%. Conversely, IFC investments in new renewable energy and energy efficiency were a mixed
bag in 2008, decreasing by about 50% for new renewable energy and increasing by around 190% for
energy efficiency. The IFC’s performance is important given that it represents efforts to attract the private
sector’s interest in renewable energy and lowcarbon alternatives.
The carbon trap
When developing countries eventually take on GHG emissions reduction targets of their own, the World
Bank’s current approach to energy will make meeting those targets more difficult and costly for them.
Moreover, many of the World Bank’s largest oil and gas extraction and pipeline projects have been and
continue to be aimed at exports to developed countries, further feeding the appetite of developed countries
for fossil fuels. As a result, the Bank is not adequately encouraging UNFCCC Annex 1 countries to reduce
their GHG emissions from fossil fuels.
The Bank’s Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) will release the first report in the series on the World Bank
and climate change. The IEG finds that “there is a general tendency to prefer investments in power
generation, which are visible and easily understood, to investments in efficiency, which are less visible,
involve human behaviour rather than electrical engineering, and whose efficacy is harder to measure”.
infochangeindia.org/…/Carbon-dating-t… 2/4
2/18/2010 InfoChange India News & Features dev…
In January 2009, the Bank released criteria for its clean technology fund, one of two funds established to
help developing countries adapt to climate change and switch to clean energy technologies to reduce
emissions. Despite the Bank’s own 2004 extractive industries review recommending an end to funding for
coal, clean technology fund criteria rely heavily on the financing of new coalfired powerplants that are
carbon capture and storage (CCS)ready and highly efficient. CCS technology aims to capture carbon
dioxide emissions from power station smokestacks and deposit them underground.
Even this small allocation towards lowcarbon clean energy sources doesn’t come from the Bank’s own
kitty. Carbon offsets and Global Environment Facility funding accounted for 30% of overall funding for new
renewable energy. It is important to make note of this as the money is derived from funds that were
specifically created to address climate change. These funds, plus an additional 1% from the Global
Partnership on OutputBased Aid, do not originate from the Bank’s own portfolio of funds.
This clearly shows that the Bank is more than responsible for making developing countries take the carbon
intensive path to development. Going by investments already made in projects, no country will be out of
‘carbonintensive mode’ for at least 2040 years, as this is the average lifespan of a coal powerplant. Other
studies suggest that multilateral financial institutions are also pushing for this mode of development. A new
study by the Environmental Defense Fund shows that international public financial institutions have
provided $ 37 billion to finance the construction of at least 88 new coal plants in developing countries since
1994, when Kyoto Protocol commitments for developed countries started. What’s more, that $ 37 billion in
direct financing secured another $ 60 billion or so from private and local sources, taking the total investment
in new coal plants in developing nations to over $ 100 billion. “The Bank’s ‘new’ approach differs little from
its over 60 years of topdown, growthoriented lending which has widened inequalities in recipient
communities and has largely benefited richcountry corporations that have carried out the ‘development’
project,” says a report from the Institute for Policy Studies on the Bank’s energy policy.
Table 1
World Bank Group financing for fossil fuels (in million dollars)
1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008
World Bank 577 618 599 592 544 255 291 313 758 575 199
IFC 521 229 935 373 794 488 499 409 590 824 2,988
Subtotal 1,098 847 1,534 965 1,338 743 790 722 1,348 1,399 3,187
Total 1,283 1,052 1,773 1,195 1,530 1,055 945 797 1,465 1,551 3,187
Total adjusted for inflation (at 1,593 1,288 2,125 1,398 1,760 1,188 1,035 845 1,505 1,505 3,137
2007)
Source: Bank Information Centre, Washington DC, 2009
Table 2
World Bank Group financing, threeyear average (in million dollars and inflation adjusted to 2007)
Source: Bank Information Centre, Washington DC, 2009
Table 3
Share of World Bank Group total energy sector financing
1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007
Total energy sector (million dollars) 4,150 2,327 2,834 3,048 2,902 2,390 1,691 2,865 4,585 3,604
Fossil fuels 26% 36% 54% 32% 46% 31% 47% 25% 29% 39%
Large hydropow er 15 0% 4% 0% 2% 1% 3% 8% 4% 19%
Energy efficiency 10% 0% 7% 5% 1% 2% 1% 5% 9% 5%
Source: Bank Information Centre, Washington DC, 2009
(Richard Mahapatra is with WaterAid India. He would like to thank the Bank Information Centre, Washington
DC, for making availab le the assessment of the World Bank’s data)
infochangeindia.org/…/Carbon-dating-t… 3/4