It’s time to shift international energy investments to support energy services that are clean, reliable, and sustainable, and honestly provide energy access for the poorest.
You can help. The World Bank – an influential development bank that runs on taxpayer money – is currently updating its Energy Strategy that will guide its investments for the next decade. Despite its pro-poor, pro-climate rhetoric, the World Bank’s fossil fuel lending has increased 400 percent since 2006. Furthermore, according to Oil Change International’s independent analysis, NONE of the oil, gas or coal projects in the last two years were funded specifically to provide energy access to the poor.
The Bank needs to hear from us.
Join Oil Change International and our partners on March 1, 2011 in a virtual day of action to call on the Bank to Free Us from Fossil Fuels. By signing our petition, you will be sent directly to even more ways to engage.
Why? Because as one of the most influential international financial institutions, the World Bank Group sets the tone for international energy investments in developing countries. And the Bank continues to fund fossil fuels at record rates, while new renewables and energy efficiency lending lags behind.
The World Bank says that it needs to keep funding fossil fuel projects to promote ‘development.’ But fossil fuel projects actually increase climate change impacts on the poor, local environmental pollution and health problems, and even worsen social inequality.
Get involved. The Bank needs to hear this message loud and clear: Free Us from Fossil Fuels.
Want more information to build your case? Read our fact sheet.
The technology is there. It will cost at first, but if we make the needed investment now we will save in the long run.