FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

September 26, 2018

CONTACT:
Alex Doukas, alex [at] priceofoil.org

Big Shift Global reaction to World Bank Group announcement on increased investment in battery storage

Today, at the One Planet Summit implementation meeting in New York, the World Bank Group announced a $1 billion commitment to help fast-track investments in battery storage in developing and middle-income countries. In response, the Big Shift Global coalition, including the Bank Information Centre Europe, the Bretton Woods Project, Oil Change International, Swedish Society for Nature Conservation, and Tearfund, released the following statement:

“Increasing battery storage for renewable energy is important to increase electricity supply in developing countries and today’s announcement sends a welcome signal of the World Bank Group’s efforts to expand the market for battery storage.

“While this new commitment is an important step forward, it’s not enough. Millions of people are currently being left behind when it comes to accessing clean, affordable energy. The World Bank must commit to significantly scaling up its finance to support energy access for those without it, particularly for distributed renewable energy solutions, which experts indicate have an outsized role to play in providing energy access to people in rural areas.

“The Big Shift Global campaign is calling on the World Bank to dedicate at least half of its energy budget to providing sustainable energy access, and to scale up its financing for distributed renewable energy to account for 70% of its energy access budget.”

“The World Bank’s statement on this commitment describes how investments in battery storage can help advance mini-grids, a distributed renewable energy solution that can rapidly deliver energy access to the world’s poorest. It is crucial that this new World Bank commitment helps drive forward the deployment of clean mini-grids in developing countries.”

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Notes to Editors:

  • The Big Shift Global coalition is a multi-stakeholder, global campaign coordinated by over 40 organisations from the Global North and South. Together, we aim to make the people’s views on energy finance known to Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs), their Executive Directors, as well as the Heads of State and Finance Ministers of the members countries. Leveraging public opinion is crucial to aligning decisions made by the MDBs with long-term climate safety and poverty goals – this inevitably involves a shift away from financing any form of fossil fuels to financing clean, sustainable, renewable energy for all.
  • On September 26th 2018, the World Bank Group announced a new $1 billion program to support the deployment of battery storage for electricity in developing countries, with the aim of leveraging $4 billion in additional resources to support this agenda.