World Bank has announced that it has financed $3.3 billion for renewable energy and efficiency projects during the year ended June 30, 2009. This was 5 per cent higher than in the previous year. During 2009, low-carbon projects accounted for 40 per cent of total lending to the energy sector.
Reactions to this performance have been mixed. Low-carbon projects do not necessarily mean clean energy projects, but also conventional coal-fired or fossil fuel-based projects that promise higher energy efficiency. This has led some experts to believe that fossil fuels would continue to meet energy requirements of developing nations, albeit with a lesser carbon footprint.
Clean projects also include hydropower projects where there are social costs like loss of land, displacement of project-affected persons and so on. However, a redeeming factor has been that World Bank lending to large hydropower projects declined in 2009 |