World Bank President Jim Yong Kim announced that World Bank will stop financing oil and natural gas exploration and extraction projects after 2019. President Jim added that certain exceptions to funding upstream oil and natural gas projects could be granted for the poorest countries, where the benefit of energy access would be considered with those countries' commitments under the Paris Agreement.
The move was meant to help countries meet the greenhouse gas-curbing pledges they had made in support of the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit global warming.
Trillions of dollars must be invested in clean energy technology to meet the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting average global warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-Industrial Revolution levels, experts say.
A lack of money has long been a constraint to the global effort to limit global warming, worsened by US President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw America from the Paris Agreement and slash funding for climate projects.
