Worldchanging: Bright Green: Climate Follies: Bankrolling Dirty Power in Developing Countries

Worldchanging: Bright Green: Climate Follies: Bankrolling Dirty Power in Developing Countries: "Why then does it finance coal? Here's what the World Bank's Chief Economist has to say: 'Because coal is often cheap and abundant, and the need for electricity is so great, coal plants are going to be built with or without our support. Without our support, it is the cheaper, dirtier type of coal plants that will proliferate.'

Not true says the Center for Global Development. It says most new coal plants that are built without World Bank funds, at least in India, ARE the cleaner, so-called 'supercritical' type because the operating and fuel costs of the supercritical coal plants are cheaper.

More to the point, supercritical coal plants are only slightly cleaner, producing about 15 percent less C02 than traditional coal plants, according to EDF. They are still not as clean as even a natural gas-fired plant.

Which leads me to alternatives. Clearly, bringing electricity to the world's poor is a goal we can all get behind, but there's a better way to do it: Renewables, energy efficiency and grid modernization. International financial institutions should be scaling up their support for these rather than financing coal.

Today the Bank spends twice as much on fossil fuel projects as new renewable energy and energy efficiency projects combined and five times as much as new renewables alone.

That's a missed opportunity when large-scale renewables are so feasible in the developing world. Take Gujarat State in India, where a monstrous 4,000-megawatt coal-fired plant, the Tata Mundra, is being built with World Bank support. More than 7,000 megawatts of renewable energy are also in the works there -- with no help from international development banks. AES, a US based energy company, is constructing a $1.2 billion 1,000 megawatt solar thermal array as part of that plan.

Think how many more renewable energy projects could be built if public international financial institutions changed their lending priorities.

Equally important, international financial institutions must also tighten the definition of 'low carbon.' Supercritical coal plants now meet that feeble standard, which gives the World Bank's claim that 40 percent of its energy lending is 'low carbon' a hollow ring.

These reforms are imperative, for if we do not slow the rise of CO2 emissions from coal in the developing world, no amount of emissions cuts in industrialized nations will make a difference.

Mindy Lubber is president of Ceres, a leading coalition of investors, environmental groups and other public interest organizations working with companies to address sustainability challenges such as global climate change.

This piece originally appeared in The Huffington Post"