While countries are facing rising inflation and uneven recoveries from the Covid-19 pandemic, climate change has not slowed down.
As thus year is already set to rank among one of the 10 warmest years on record, a climate impacts threaten to push millions into poverty.
The World Bank Group is committed to supporting developing countries to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and increase resiliency to climate impacts, while also meeting core development priorities.
This is a central approach of the Bank Group’s Climate Change Action Plan for 2021 to 2025, which is already delivering results.
Some of these include a significant boost for climate finance overall.
This year alone, the Bank Group lending for climate-related investments reached 36 percent or $31.7 billion, exceeding its new climate finance target of 35 percent as outlined in the action plan.
The $31.7 billion comprises the total share of financing that is directly tied to climate action across all World Bank projects and it constitutes a 19 percent increase from the $26.6 billion record reached in the previous fiscal year.
The World Bank also took a major step-up for adaptation finance in particular. I addition, its adaptation finance also increased to a record $12.9 billion, representing 49 percent of its overall share of climate finance.
This figure reaches close to the World Bank’s commitment to achieve parity between mitigation and adaptation financing.
The highlights include analytical innovations that bridge development and climate priorities. The Bank Group announced new core diagnostic report for all World Bank client countries. The Country Climate and Development Reports (CCDRs) analyse how a country’s development goals can be achieved while seeking to mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change.
So far, the Bank Group has published CCDRs for Turkiye and Vietnam, with a further 20 CCDRs to be finalised by the end of this year.
The snapshot of the Bank Group’s climate action include Malawi’s first solar plus battery utility-scale project.
Malawi has among the lowest electricity access rate in the world, just 11.2 percent in 2019.
Most of the existing generation capacity -75 percent depends on hydro-power (a significant portion of it from Lake Malawi), which makes the country vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and leads to frequent and lengthy blackouts.
Furthermore, peak demand is currently managed by using expensive and polluting diesel generators.
The government of proposes to increase electrification levels to 30 percent by 2030, seeking to increase electricity supply by new independent power producers and connecting new customers to the grid.
Earlier this year, the World Bank’s Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (Miga) issued guarantees of $24 million for investments in a new 20-megawatt solar photovoltaic plant installed by JCM Solar Corporation at Golomoti in Dedza. The plant includes a battery energy storage system for the first in Malawi.
The photovoltaic plant, the second independent power producer in Malawi supported by Miga, adds a new source of clean energy supply that will reduce carbon emissions by 45, 000 metric tonnes over its lifecycle.
The battery storage system was installed and made operational at the same time as the plant and has an expected useful life of up to 15 years.
The climate co-benefits percentage for this project is 100 percent. The project is also consistent with both the low-carbon and climate resilient dimensions of the Paris alignment.
The new plant will help reduce 45 000 tonnes in carbon dioxide emissions. WOLD BANK
Source: The Nation_Thursday, September, 22, 2022