I. Key Findings

1. Since the 1992 Earth Summit, the World Bank has spent 25 times more on climate-changing fossil fuels than on renewables. The fossil fuel projects the World Bank has financed will over the next 20 to 50 years add carbon dioxide emissions to the Earth's atmosphere equivalent to 1.3 times the total amount emitted by all the world's countries in 1995.

Since the Climate Convention, designed to limit greenhouse gas emissions, was signed by a majority of the world's countries at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, the World Bank Group has spent $13.6 billion on fossil fuel projects which will, over their lifetimes, release 37.5 billion tons of CO2 into the Earth's atmosphere. Another $3.9 billion in fossil fuel lending is pending, which will add another 3.8 billion tons of CO2 to the Bank's climate change portfolio for the years 1992-98. Total estimated carbon dioxide emissions for all of the countries from fossil fuel combustion--the single greatest contributor to climate change--were approximately 28 billion tons of CO2 in 1995.

2. World Bank President James Wolfensohn's 1997 Earth Summit II pledge to calculate greenhouse gas emissions associated with World Bank projects has proven hollow: Less than 10 percent of all World Bank projects are being calculated for their impact on the climate.

Wolfensohn pledged that the World Bank would begin calculating greenhouse gas emissions associated with all of its energy projects at the Earth Summit II. However, by its own admission, the World Bank will exclude from its calculations all transportation lending, and all coal, oil or gas reserves which the Bank helps open up for exploitation; these projects constitute roughly 90 percent of the future emissions associated with World Bank energy lending. Instead, the Bank only calculates emissions from power projects it helps fund. Furthermore, despite an operational directive to do so, an internal review found that the World Bank makes these climate change calculations for power projects only 46 percent of the time. Little wonder, then, that the World Bank claims it was responsible for "only" 5.1 billion tons of CO2 for Bank projects between 1992-97 rather than the 35 billion tons of CO2, as our 1997 study showed.

3. Since the 1992 Earth Summit, nearly one in five World Bank fossil fuel dollars promoted coal and diesel-fired power plants in China; from 1997-98, one in three did.

China already burns more coal than any other country, the dirtiest, most carbon-intensive of fossil fuels. The Bank is ensuring that much of China's future power will come from coal, and in some cases, the Bank is violating its own environmental guidelines to do so. In the last year, over $1.3 billion was spent on coal-fired power in China for four massive coal burners --Tuoketuo, Waigaoqao, Hunan and Yancheng. These four burners alone will eventually release more than 2 billion tons of CO2 into the Earth's atmosphere. From May 1997 through September of 1998, the World Bank has backed more fossil fuel power capacity than it did in the previous five years, with the largest share of those investments being in China.

4. The World Bank is becoming dangerously entangled in a web of conflicting economic and political interests, the outcome of which may play a deleterious role in the stability of the Earth's climate while making the poorest worse off.

The World Bank is home to and one of the three controlling institutions governing the multi-billion dollar Global Environmental Facility (GEF), created in 1990 to fund developing country projects that have climate benefits. Yet, although under the same roof, the World Bank has failed to "mainstream" lessons learned from the GEF. Instead, the World Bank is increasing its investments in fossil fuels. Now, the World Bank is playing a growing role in "joint implementation" (JI) projects a form of carbon trading on a project basis. In addition, the World Bank now proposes to help "jump-start" the market in carbon. This focus on trading threatens to both distract the World Bank from its mandate of poverty alleviation and sustainable development and to create a double perverse incentive for continued Bank support for fossil fuels.

5. Although earmarked for sustainable development and poverty relief, 9 out of 10 World Bank fossil fuel projects benefit transnational corporations based in the wealthy G-7 countries, many of whom are members of a U.S.-based lobbying group, the Global Climate Coalition, that actively opposes any action on climate change.

In October 1997, speaking at the 15th World Petroleum Congress in Beijing, Exxon chairman Lee Raymond urged China to use more, not less fossil fuels, and said nature was to blame for most global warming. Raymond also heads up the American Petroleum Institute, which, together with lobbyists from other industries dependent on fossil fuels, joined forces under the misleading banner, "The Global Climate Coalition." Their goal: To get the U.S. to take no action on climate change until China and other key developing countries take action. This perfect formula for stasis guarantees business as usual for the oil, gas and coal industries while the Earth's climate grows warmer and dangerously out of balance. Meanwhile, these same members of the GCC -- including Exxon, Amoco, Chevron, CMS Energy, and Mobil -- are being awarded contracts for World Bank fossil fuel projects in developing countries, including China, and economies in transition.

6. The World Bank is helping open up some of the world's richest untapped oil and gas fields in regions ruled by dictators, while ignoring renewable energy opportunities that others are seeking out.

From Burma, where a gas pipeline allegedly built with slave labor feeds into World Bank-backed power projects across the border in Thailand, to Nigeria, where 9 Ogoni activists were hanged in 1995 for opposition to oil drilling in their homeland, the World Bank is involved in controversial oil, gas, and coal projects --in the name of "sustainable development" and "poverty alleviation." Meanwhile, in many countries, where others see gold in renewable energy, the Bank sees--and invests in--black gold. For example, in West Africa, the Bank is promoting a gas pipeline from Chevron's fields in Nigeria to CMS Energy's new power plant in Ghana, while the Economic Community of West African States is studying the solar and wind energy potential in each of the region's 16 states. In Morocco a 50-megawatt wind farm is being developed independently near a 696-megawatt coal-fired Power plant funded by the World Bank. The Bank's prototype renewable energy project, the proposed Solar Thermal Power Plant in Rajasthan, India, actually would generate roughly three times more energy from fossil fuels than from the sun.