Well, the World Bank’s senior management has really done it this time: As my colleague Joel Meister reported today, Congress has reacted to its intransigence on carbon accounting and coal-fired power by deleting budgetary support for the Bank’s Clean Technology Fund. After cre
The U.S. Congress today passed its omnibus appropriations bill for Fiscal Year 2009, H.R. 1105. Missing in action: the U.S. contribution to the World Bank's so-called Clean Technology Fund (CTF), which has repeatedly come under fire from CGD's David Wheeler and others for including coal-fired power plants among those potentially eligible for CTF support.
World Bank chief economist Justin Lin endorsed charges for CO2 emissions in a keynote address at the 10th anniversary conference of the Global Development Network being held in Kuwait. Speaking in an ornate marble hall at the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development following an address by Mohammed Al-Sabah, Kuwait’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lin said that he recognized that such a call might not be politically correct in the oil-rich state.
President Obama clearly wants to break with his predecessor on energy and climate policy. But the American political divide has not disappeared, and it still threatens to derail the Copenhagen climate negotiations next December. Three developments during the past week highlight both the promise and the peril: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's appointment of Todd Stern to be U.S.
Eldis, the online aggregator of development policy, practice and research at the Institute of Development Studies in Sussex, is conducting a survey to identify "the most significant new piece of development research of 2008." This strikes me as having roughly the same statistical validity as American Idol does for when it comes to finding new singing talent. Still, as with Idol and other talent shows, the entertainment value of a popularity contest is hard to dispute!
What is it going to take to get the World Bank to change course on renewable energy? Here at the Center we’ve been trying to help get the bank to be more aggressive on renewables for nearly a year. But inertia is a powerful force, and despite shifts in thinking by individual bank staff, the institution itself is still moving very slowly. But what if a major client and a competitor joined forces on renewables?
Today Bloomberg News reports that Russia's national monopoly, Gazprom, has shut down all natural gas shipments to the Ukraine as part of an escalating price war that has created an energy crisis in Europe.
We are at the start of what promises to be an unusually difficult year in the global economy. Policy decisions in the United States and other rich world countries will matter immensely for poor and vulnerable people living in developing countries.
It's been a busy year for citizen action on carbon emissions. On September 11, a UK jury considered charges against six Greenpeace activists who tried to shut down the Kingsnorth power station in Kent, UK. Kingsnorth emits 12.8 million tons of CO2 annually -- among the top 150 of over 50,000 plants worldwide in our CARMA database. It will vault much higher in the rankings after its planned expansion increases its emissions to 24.8 million tons.
Nobel laureate Steve Chu reportedly will head the Department of Energy, a huge win for solar power. Chu is a real visionary, and solar is first on his list, so we're sending him a copy of a brand new working paper (posted today!) by David Wheeler and Kevin Ummel called Desert Power: The Economics of Solar Thermal Electricity For Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East.