Recognizing urgent energy challenges and opportunities, the Bank Group has joined the United Nations’ Sustainable Energy for All Initiative which calls on governments, businesses and civil society to achieve the three SE4ALL goals by 2030.
To help achieve these goals, the Bank Group is scaling up its already extensive program of support for sustainable energy for poverty reduction. The WBG is already strongly engaged in many of the high impact areas identified in the Sustainable Energy for All Action Agenda, including electrification, grid infrastructure and supply efficiency, distributed electricity solutions, large scale renewable power, cleaner transportation, gas flaring reduction, buildings and appliance standards, modern cooking fuels, and appliances.
The Bank Group’s central contribution to the Sustainable Energy for All initiative is its energy sector lending program, which commits over $8 billion a year to energy programs across the developing world. This financing leverages a comparable amount of private, donor and public funding, for a total of $16 billion of support a year, a large proportion of which is focused directly on the three goals.
