Keeping the poor in the dark

This article was published in Spiked Online 5 April 2011

New World Bank rules restricting support for coal-fired power stations will confine millions to poverty.

According to a report in yesterday’s Guardian, the World Bank is proposing to limit its support for coal-fired power stations in the name of sustainability and tackling climate change. The result of this policy change, if it is approved, will not be more renewable power but poor people being deprived of electricity.

The World Bank, one of the global financial institutions created by the Bretton Woods conference in 1944, has the tagline ‘Working for a World Free of Poverty’. One way it has endeavoured to do that in recent years is through funding coal-fired power stations, increasing such aid 40-fold in the past five years. In 2008, for example, the World Bank offered $450million in loans towards the building of a coal-fired plant in Gujarat, India. In April 2010, the Bank agreed a $3.75 billion loan to help construct the enormous Medupi Power Station in energy-desperate South Africa, a decision that was opposed by a number of leading World Bank members, including the US and UK.