World Bank Invests Record Sums in New Coal Plants
World Bank invests record sums in coal
Last year, $3.4bn was invested in the dirtiest fossil fuel despite international commitments to cut emissions
The Guardian (UK), Sept. 15. 2010
Record
sums were invested last year in coal power - the most carbon intensive
form of energy on the planet - by the World Bank, despite international
commitments to slash the carbon emissions blamed for climate change.
The
World Bank said this week that a total of US$3.4bn (£2.2bn) - or a
quarter of all funding for energy projects - was spent in the year to
June 2010 helping to build new coal-fired power stations, including the
controversial Medupi plant in South Africa,. Over the same period the
bank also spent $1bn (£640m) on looking and drilling for oil and gas.
However,
the Bank Information Centre, which examined the spending, disagreed and
said the figure invested in coal was $4.4 bn in the fiscal year
22009-10.
The
discrepancy is due to the World Bank not including in its figure a $1bn
project in India which is funding power transmission networks for
coal-fired power stations rather than the stations themselves.
Environmental
campaign groups said spending on coal in that period was 40 times more
than five years ago, and claimed there was an "incoherence at the heart
of the World Bank's thinking about energy" that would damage long term
attempts to cut emissions of carbon and other greenhouse gases from such
plants.
"At
the same time as the bank is seeking to gain control of the billions
which will be channeled to developing countries to help them cope with
global warming, the bank is still lending staggeringly large and growing
sums to finance coal-fired power," said Alison Doig, senior advisor on
climate change for the charity Christian Aid.
"We
know that coal is the dirtiest of all the fossil fuels - the one which
most exacerbates the climate crisis which is having devastating effects
on the lives of people living in poverty. We also know that by financing
the building of coal power stations the bank is locking countries into
coal use for the next 40 to 50 years [the life expectancy of the
plants]."
The
World Bank defended its payments saying that the figures for 2010 were
distorted by two major coal projects in Botswana and South Africa, while
over the five year period from 2005 the bank had spent US$4.5bn on coal
power, and $12.5bn on renewable energy and energy efficiency -
including a record year for these sectors also last year.
Coal
plants were only subsidised when there were "exceptional circumstances
where countries have few or no prospects for other energy sources," said
Roger Morier, a World Bank spokesman.
"Our
energy portfolio is increasingly oriented to renewable energy and
energy efficiency," added Morier. "We are fulfilling our mandate of
responding to the urgent needs of our client countries for access to
efficient, reliable, affordable electricity, while also helping those
countries to get on a low-carbon development path as soon as possible."
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010
