Breaking the Bank

World Bank should get out of carbon-offset market, says report 2

Carbon-offset dealings by the World Bank have been criticized (and not for the first time) in a report released Thursday by the Institute for Policy Studies. In the past two years, the report charges, the bank has loaned $1.5 billion to fossil-fuel companies to make minor greenhouse-gas reductions. It then sells carbon credits for those reductions, says coauthor Daphne Wysham, "takes its 13 percent cut, and everyone is happy." (Well, except the planet and its advocates -- the bank has come under much protest recently for funding a massive coal plant in India.) The bank would be better off getting out of the offset market and putting its funds toward renewable energy, says report coauthor Janet Redman: "This does nothing for increasing access to clean energy, the development of the low-carbon economy, or sustainable [solutions]."

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  1. Delay And Deny's avatar

    Delay And Deny Posted 5:53 am
    13 Apr 2008

    1.5 Beeeellll-yon

    1.5B in the worldwide energy market?
     ... not enough to buy postage stamps...
  2. green8659 Posted 5:07 pm
    06 Sep 2008

    I agreeI isn't healthy to be putting there money here.  Although I'm all for carbon reduction.

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