Financing the energy transition: are World Bank, IFC, and ADB energy supply investments supporting a low-carbon future?

Although Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) already track and report on their climate finance, less is known about how investments across their entire energy supply portfolios relate to achieving sustainable development and climate-change objectives. This report provides a first-cut assessment of how the energy supply investments of the World Bank, International Finance Corporation (IFC), and Asian Development Bank (ADB) align with the Paris Agreement goal to limit global temperature rise to well below 2°C.

Key points

The report “Financing the energy transition: are World Bank, IFC, and ADB energy supply investments supporting a low-carbon future?” from the World Resources Institute raises important policy questions for MDB shareholders, including the Group of Seven (G7), and for MDB management. These include

how best to promote the deployment of technologies that are unambiguously aligned with 2°C scenarios,
how to put in place the conditions that foster alignment with such scenarios, whether and how to deploy energy supply technologies that remain controversial,
and how to manage the risk of technologies that lock in highcarbon energy generation for long time periods.