World Bank Caves to U.S. ‘Voodoo Science’ Pressure, But Keeps Funding Clean Energy

July 7, 2026
Full Story: The Energy Mix
Chris Bonasia

The World Bank has axed a climate financing target under pressure from the Trump administration, but continues to support new projects that help address climate change.

In a late June announcement, the Bank—a global institution that facilitates loans, grants, and other support to developing countries—said it will extend its Climate Change Action Plan (CCAP) that was due to expire that month, but “retire” a target to direct 45% of its financing to projects that would provide climate co-benefits, along with a related 35% emissions reduction target.

“We will complete our shift from inputs to outcomes to maximize development impact,” the Bank said in a release.

It will continue to track and report net greenhouse gas emissions linked to its projects, while also tracking beneficiaries with enhanced resilience to climate risks. Meanwhile, an Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) will assess the CCAP’s effectiveness, as requested by its executive board.

The decision to cancel the target followed extensive negotiations during which the United States—the organization’s largest shareholder—pushed to kill the CCAP after its expiry.

Last fall, the U.S. and representatives from Russia, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia declined to sign a letter from France and 18 other countries that expressed support for the World Bank’s work on climate change, writes Reuters. Then in April, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent criticized the 45% finance target, which he said “breeds inefficiency, distorts economic decision-making, and moves the Bank away from its core mission.”

“The optics are terrible,” an official close to talks told the Financial Times in June, adding that countries were being forced “to find a way to accommodate the voodoo science of the United States.”

Climate Home News writes that the CCAP’s survival is meaningful—and will preserve the World Bank’s support for clean energy and climate resilience.

“It could have been a lot worse,” Danny Scull, a senior policy advisor at clean energy think tank E3G, told the United Kingdom-based news organization. “I would have loved to see the most ambitious outcome possible, but it is far less likely we’ll see a scenario where the bank all of a sudden reverses its current trajectory and starts delivering less on climate.”

Days after cancelling its 45% target—which it had already met, according to Climate Home—the World Bank approved US$265 million in financing to develop the Ifahsa Pumped Hydropower Storage Project in Morocco. The 300-megawatt facility will replace about three terawatt-hours of fossil fuel-generated electricity and avoid roughly 1.7 million ⁠tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions each year.

Many individual entities within the World Bank Group, such as the International Development Association, have their own climate targets that still need to be met, notes Climate Home. Wealthy countries also rely on climate finance through the World Bank as part of their commitments under a COP29 agreement to provide $300 billion to developing countries each year by 2035.

“Targets send enormous signals about an institution’s direction of travel,” Clemence Landers, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, told E&E News. “At the same time, it’s a sign of the times, and the World Bank is doing its level best to not rankle its largest shareholder.”