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As the Annual Meetings of the African Development Bank (AfDB) took place this week in the Ivory Coast, civil society campaigners have been calling for the bank to stop funding fossil gas, but a senior official told Climate Home that the bank will continue to fund the fossil fuel in order to support intermittent sources of renewable electricity.
On the sidelines of the meetings in Abidjan, these campaigners criticised the bank’s decision not to exempt investments in gas from its energy sector policy and called on the bank to exclude gas projects in Mission 300 — a joint initiative of the AfDB and World Bank launched last year to connect 300 million Africans to electricity by 2030.
“We should be doing all that we can to help Africa leapfrog [to renewables] and not dive deeper into the gas era,” said Greenwatch policy advisor Anja Gebel at a side event organised by Power Shift Africa.
Echoing this call, after the election of Mauritania’s Ould Sidi Tah as the bank’s next president, civil society groups in a statement said that the new president should institute “a comprehensive ban on fossil fuel financing by the AfDB, including gas”.
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But Wale Shonibare, AfDB’s director for energy financial solutions, policy, and regulations, does not see the bank’s funding of gas ending soon. He said that the bank will continue funding gas because it will serve as a transition fuel.
He said that, in some parts of the continent, gas can cheaply provide the necessary baseload – meaning a consistent supply of electricity – to support solar and wind power, whose electricity generation varies. “When the sun is not shining what happens? so you need baseload that will be there all the time ,” he told Climate Home.
Shonibare said that the grid is a controlling factor, and countries must assess how much renewable energy their infrastructure can handle. He gave the example of Chad, saying their grid capacity is only about 150 megawatts.
“I cannot put more than 30 megawatts of renewables on the grid, otherwise it’s going to destabilise the grid”, he said, so base load from gas or hydropower is necessary.
The AfDB has made it clear that it will no longer finance coal, Shonibare said, but “we have never said that we will never do any fossil but when we do fossil we are going to justify that that’s the best and least-cost solution for the countries at the time”. For now, it is impractical for Africa to go from fossil fuels to renewables, he added.
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Europe’s gas station
Rajneesh Bhuee, Stop Funding Gas Campaign manager at Recourse, said the bank promotes fossil gas as the least-cost solution due to its readily available reserves on the continent, but in reality, these countries are not tapping into those reserves for local consumption.
“There is no country on the continent that you can point out and say that has invested in gas that is using that gas for local consumption. There is this narrative that Africa is becoming Europe’s gas station because we are continuously exporting gas,” she told Climate Home.
She warned that fossil gas threatens countries’ climate goals, locks countries into long-term dependence on fossil fuels and deepens debt crisis of these countries “because they are investing into a resource that in the next 10 to 15 years will no longer have a market”.
Bhuee’s Recourse, which developed a fact sheet alongside other civil society, found that while the AfDB reached a significant milestone in 2024 with no fossil fuel project funding approved, the bank’s classification of high carbon fossil gas as a ‘transition fuel’, leaves the door open for backsliding to more fossil investments in the future.
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The fact sheet recommended that the AfDB should exclude gas from Mission 300 and maintain the phase out of fossil fuels investments by changing the bank’s energy sector policy to exclude all fossil fuels including fossil gas, from future investments.
Ould Tah backs fossil fuels
Civil society groups want the new president to take this forward and pave a new path for the continent’s energy future by shifting toward 100% renewables.
Fiza Naz Qureshi, gas campaigner at Big Shift Global Campaign, said Ould Tah must show “bold leadership that breaks from fossil fuel dependency,” adding that continued support for gas — including through Mission 300 and clean cooking initiatives — “risks locking communities, especially women, into harmful energy systems”.
But the Mauritanian appears to support a different approach to Africa’s energy future. In an interview with Africanews, he said the continent can thrive by using “all available energy resources to support economic growth”.
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In a separate interview with The Africa Report, Ould Tah said the bank has the capacity to do more, as currently it approves much less funding annually than other multilateral banks, which he finds concerning considering Africa’s vast infrastructure gaps and the urgency of meeting the sustainable development goals.
However, his ambitions to increase funding may face stiff challenges. The global breakdown in multilateral cooperation and a proposed funding reduction from the United States threaten to constrain the bank’s ability to expand. Just last month, Washington proposed a $555 million cut to the AfDB’s African Development Fund that supports the continent’s poorest countries.
In light of this, the bank is turning to innovative mechanisms like carbon markets to raise financing for climate action and energy security. At the Annual Meetings, the AfDB launched an Africa carbon support facility which officials say will support countries in developing policies and regulations to govern carbon trading. The aim is to make carbon credits a tradable commodity on Africa’s stock exchanges, according to Reuters.
Affirming this commitment, Kevin Kariuki, AfDB’s vice president for power, energy, climate change and green growth said that “carbon market development is an imperative for the continent”.
The post Civil society groups push back on fossil gas funding as AfDB welcomes new president appeared first on Climate Home News.
Civil society groups push back on fossil gas funding as AfDB welcomes new president
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Prepared by a coalition of nine Western Australian union, industry, conservation, and community organisations—including UnionsWA, the Conservation Council WA, and the Smart Energy Council—the WA Clean Energy, Jobs & Industry Plan provides a practical roadmap to transform Western Australia into a clean energy powerhouse while creating thousands of secure local jobs.
Western Australia stands at a pivotal crossroads: lead the global clean energy economy or watch investment, future industries, and secure jobs go elsewhere. The WA Clean Energy, Jobs & Industry Plan outlines a transformative blueprint to harness the state’s world-class solar and wind resources. Discover how legislated renewable targets, green iron manufacturing, and a dedicated regional training strategy can generate tens of thousands of local jobs, lower household bills, and build a resilient, net-zero future for all Western Australians.
WA needs a clear and forward-thinking plan if it is going to become a competitive renewable energy powerhouse and maintain its economic strength through the energy transition.
“Western Australians know a faster renewable energy transition will lower their household expenses and prevent harmful climate pollution. But the community also needs clear direction to ensure this transition will create jobs, lower costs and not cause undue environmental harm.
“Here, sectors representing a broad range of interests have laid the groundwork for those outcomes, clearly outlining what is needed to create a future for WA that is good for the environment, for the climate, for workers and for the economy.
Summary
The WA Clean Energy, Jobs & Industry Plan sets out a strategic roadmap to position Western Australia as a global clean energy superpower while creating thousands of secure local jobs.
The report establishes three overarching goals:
- Creating local employment.
- Maintaining industrial competitiveness.
- Lowering household energy costs
To realize this vision, the framework details actionable measures to follow on from the recent WA Government announcement of a 75% Renewable Energy Target by 2031 for the South West Interconnected System. This includes developing a statewide Renewable Energy Target, coordinating statewide workforce and training pipelines, strategically planning regional infrastructure to safeguard high-value biodiversity and cultural heritage, and ensuring equitable benefit-sharing through household electrification incentives and First Nations equity partnerships. Ultimately, the plan highlights that establishing clear policy and regulatory certainty will unlock lower energy bills, boost power reliability, and secure the state’s global competitiveness in emerging green commodity export markets.
Key Findings
- Statewide Renewable Energy Target and Emissions Reduction Targets: The report calls for a statewide RET and 1.5°C aligned emission reduction targets to remove policy risk, lower capital costs, and attract clean energy investment.
- Transformative Job Creation: Accelerating the transition offers massive employment prospects, including up to 8,800 solar and battery jobs by 2050, as well as 24,000 ongoing and 11,000 construction jobs in a commercial green iron industry.
- Industrial Electrification & Competitiveness: Requiring large gas users to adopt binding electrification timetables and providing concessional financing will protect existing energy-intensive manufacturers from rising energy costs and impending domestic gas shortfalls.
- Green Commodity Export Leadership: Western Australia can build new export markets in green iron, green ammonia, and offshore oil/gas decommissioning by constructing shared common-user infrastructure and setting dedicated Green Commodity Export Targets.
- Coordinated Workforce & Training Pipeline: To address critical skill shortages the plan recommends establishing a WA Clean Energy Jobs Plan 2050, three regional training hubs, and dedicated pathways for female and under-represented apprentices.
- Environmental Safeguards & Community Benefits: Fast-tracked development must be paired with State Planning Policies that avoid high-biodiversity and cultural heritage lands, mandate new data centres to run on additional renewable power, and deliver household electrification rebates and First Nations equity partnerships.
What you can do
WA has an opportunity to lead on sustainable, clean energy and associated industries. You can help by:
- Sending an email to Environment Minister Murray Watt and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, calling on them to reject Browse.
- Sharing this story to help more Australians understand what’s at stake.
- Encouraging your friends and family to take action.
Countries have completed the first “global review” of their progress towards reversing nature loss by 2030 at the COP17 biodiversity talks in Yerevan, Armenia.
The review “notes with deep concern” that, unless action is “rapidly accelerated”, the goal to reverse nature loss and meet a set of 23 targets by 2030 “will not be achieved”.
It “urges” countries to accelerate action, including by “increased ambition in addressing the gaps”.
Much of the discussions in Yerevan focused on how to raise the necessary funds to help developing countries protect nature.
Some major economies pushed to expand the range of nations that are expected to provide finance, with countries agreeing at the end of the two weeks of talks that non-donors that want to contribute can “signal interest” before COP18.
This came after developed countries failed to meet a target to significantly ramp up nature finance over the last few years.
It also came as a landmark fund agreed at COP16 in Colombia to pay communities for the genetic resources derived from nature stands nearly empty two years on.
The Yerevan talks marked the halfway point of the “Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework” (GBF), the “Paris Agreement for nature” first made in 2022 and due to be achieved by 2030.
During the nearly 12-hour-long final plenary, countries voted for Quito, Ecuador, to host the COP18 nature talks, which will be held in 2028.
Countries managed to sign off on all the major negotiation texts, marking a stark contrast to COP16, which ran so far over time that the Colombian presidency lost “quorum”, forcing talks to resume in Rome months later.
Below, Carbon Brief has detailed analysis of all of the key outcomes from COP17.
Formal negotiations
Finance
Finance, predictably, was at the heart of the discord and deadlock at the Yerevan talks.
At COP17, discussions on finance had to achieve several outcomes.
The first part – to take stock of biodiversity finance mobilised so far to meet the nature deal’s goals – fell under the global review.
As the global report noted, developed countries failed to meet their commitments to raise “at least $20bn a year by 2025” for nature. Delegates pointed to falling aid levels and a sharp 27% decline in environmental funding for the 2026-30 period.
The second part was to agree on how to mobilise resources for the next four years, to meet the GBF’s goals and targets.
Calls to “broaden the contributor base” of who pays to protect nature – and whether that should include emerging economies – became the most fraught element of the talks.
Eventually, countries agreed on what Switzerland described as a “super, mega-delicate” text. It hinged on major “political compromises”, with “no major winner or loser”, according to Kenya.
Per the decision, countries that want to be included on a list of developed country donors can “signal interest” through bilateral, confidential consultations before COP18 and every alternate COP after.
Finally, countries also agreed on criteria to shape and resource a new, permanent financial mechanism to protect nature after 2030.
However, this did not immediately take the form of a new fund under the COP that biodiverse countries have demanded since 2022, deferring the mechanism’s institutional structure to COP18.
Resource mobilisation discussions at the GBF’s halfway mark were supposed to agree on how to close the “biodiversity finance gap” and to “increase resources from all sources” to “at least” $200bn per year by 2030, as set out in target 19 of the GBF.
The talks were largely dominated by a push, led by the JUSCANZ bloc of developed countries, to “broaden the contributor base”. This could see emerging economies, such as Qatar, China, Saudi Arabia and India, being added to the list of countries that pay to protect nature.
Article 20 of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) states that developed countries “shall provide new and additional financial resources” to developing countries to meet the costs of implementing measures to protect nature.