In a piece of enlightening news for our environment, the World Bank has announced that it will stop all of its funding for the exploration and extraction of oil and gas by the end of 2019. They will focus instead on ways to promote financing for projects in the developing world that shift energy production away from traditional fossil fuels. Spokesmen for the Bank said that the decision was taken in conjunction with their desire to assist countries to achieve lower greenhouse gas levels in line with the pledges they made in the 2015 Paris Agreement. 

That agreement set a target of limiting global warming to an average of only two degrees Celsius over pre-Industrial Revolution levels. The Bank says that it is now completely committed to supporting clean energy, and by 2020 at least 28% of their total lending will go towards climate action. This represents a significant change in the Bank’s mandate to provide finance and other assistance to aid the economic advancement of developing countries.