A clean tech fund that was the brainchild of George W Bush has come under fire for promoting coal power plants in developing countries.
The , a UK-based lobby and campaign group, has 鈥渟lammed鈥� a UK government plan to put nearly 拢400 million into the World Bank鈥檚 Clean Technology Fund (CTF). And earlier this week, the US government revealed that none of its 2009 budget would go to the fund.
The CTF was created last year on the initiative of the Bush administration to help developing nations make the transition to renewable energies. However, on 30 January, the World Bank, which currently administers the fund, issued a memo describing conditions under which it would use the CTF to finance coal projects in developing nations.
Advertisement
(pdf) states that coal power stations may receive CTF financing if they meet or surpass a certain level of efficiency 鈥� meaning they must emit less than 0.795 tonnes of carbon dioxide for every megawatt hour of power produced.
Tim Jones of the World Development Movement points out that the World Bank鈥檚 own data shows that standard coal power stations built in rich nations emit 0.8 tonnes of CO2 per MWh. The difference between 0.795 and 0.8 is within rounding errors, he says.
鈥淎rguing over 0.005 in terms of efficiency makes a tiny difference to the actual emissions from a power station,鈥� says Jones. 鈥淭he key thing is that any money that is being spent on funding these power stations could have been spent on funding genuine green technologies which emit zero tonnes per megawatt hour.鈥�
He says a company that builds power stations told him earlier this week the most efficient coal power stations that can currently be built emit between 0.7 and 0.74 t/MWh.
In the US, the has been lobbying the federal government . On Wednesday, Congress passed a spending bill which, among other things, .
鈥淲e are not commenting on the internal budget processes,鈥� says Morier. 鈥淏ut we think that US commitments to fund the CTF will be honoured, if not in this fiscal year, then in the next.鈥�
