Republican senators press new World Bank leadership to lift restrictions on traditional energy resources

While renewable and cleaner energy sources have been gaining in use, a group of Republican senators wrote to World Bank President David Malpass last week in an effort to guarantee that traditional energy resources — coal, oil, and gas — will continue to play a part in the developing world.

The legislators, led by U.S. Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), sent the correspondence in an effort to reverse a World Bank policy that has instituted financing restrictions on traditional energy sources, including prohibitions on the public financing of coal-fueled stations in the developing world and a planned end to financing of upstream oil and gas projects after 2019.

The senators hope that Malpass, whose term began on April 9 of this year, will be more amenable to a policy change in his new role.

“The mission of the World Bank is to ‘eliminate extreme poverty’ and ‘to promote shared prosperity,’” the senators wrote. “In order to accomplish these objectives, the World Bank must finance projects that increase access to affordable and reliable electricity on a large enough scale to help poor nations gain economic opportunities and reduce poverty. People living in poor and developing nations want and need a stable energy supply.”

The senators addressed the issue from multiple angles, at times pointing to China’s and Russia’s own efforts to increase energy project investments throughout the world, at times imploring in terms of economic and systemic gains. Yet neither did they shy from pointing out that the United States is currently the largest shareholder of the World Bank — while noting that they would like all energy resources developed, not merely select ones.

“Over the last several years, the World Bank has essentially prohibited public financing of high-efficiency power stations fueled by coal in the developing world,” the senators wrote. “In December 2017, the World Bank announced the end of financing for upstream oil and gas projects after 2019. In October 2018, World Bank President Jim Yong Kim announced the World Bank would be abandoning the construction of a new coal power plant in Kosovo. We strongly oppose these efforts.”