Greens launch renewables campaign

By Karen Carstens

Date: 04/03/04

GREEN MEPs have launched a campaign to get EU member states to rally behind a controversial study which recommends that the World Bank increase its funding of renewable energy projects.

The report, by former Indonesian environment minister Emil Salim, highlights the Bank spends just 6% of its energy budget on renewable projects, compared with 94% for fossil fuels.

"I am now in Europe because I need your help," Salim told journalists in Brussels on Tuesday (2 March).

"Together, we can drive the Bank in the right direction".

Salim said Washington would be much harder to win over, so he has high hopes for the EU to hammer out a common position on his extractive industries review (EIR), which was commissioned by the Bank.

The Greens, who have already tabled a question to the Council of Ministers on this, will also ask for a Council declaration on a joint EU position during the next European Parliament plenary session on 11 March.

The EIR, launched in October 2001 and presented to the Bank on 23 January, consulted industry, government and pressure group representatives around the world.

Its recommendations, drafted by Salim, include phasing out all World Bank funding for projects involving oil by 2008, maintaining a moratorium on supporting both the coal and nuclear sectors and increasing funding for renewable energies by 20% annually.

Salim and his supporters have called on the Bank to send a clear pro-renewables message to all other global lending institutions.

Over the next several decades, he warned, China and India in particular "will ask themselves what the alternatives are [to fossil fuels] and it will be bad if we cannot provide them with any real alternatives".

Emil Salim, the former Environment Minister of Indonesia, visited Brussels on 2 March 2004 seeking support to persuade the World Bank to increase its funding of renewable energy projects. Mr Salim is the author of the Extractive Industries Review, which was commissioned by the World Bank, and his report highlights that the Bank spends 6% of its energy budget on renewable projects, compared with 94% for fossil fuels.