ADB not supporting coal power projects anymore
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) plans to fund several South East Asian and Central Asian countries to move towards greener energy.
Under the energy policy, the ADB has strong interventions in India with US$200 million dollars in energy projects supporting solar television, smart vehicles, electrical vehicles and battery storage and other devices that will have energy efficiency in India.
“We also have a $2 million regional technical assistance supporting floating solar energy projects in 11 island countries coming under ADB investments,” said Priyantha Wijayatunga, Chief of Energy Sector Group, Sustainability Development and Climate Change Department ADB at a webinar held on the ADB’s proposed New Energy Policy last week.
“We have also approved a loan for Pakistan for a hydro power project, 100 percent for climate financing project. There are also ADB financed wind farm projects in Uzbekistan and in Vietnam. The Uzbekistan wind farm is a 500mw project, the largest wind farm project in Central Asia and the Vietnam wind farm project too will increase its capacity to 140mw, a 30 percent increase,” he said.
Meanwhile there are also energy pilot projects in South East Asia to accelerate decommissioning of coal power plants to decarbonise the power sector. With the approval of the new ADB energy policy, plans are underway to fund more projects in the future. As far as Sri Lanka is concerned the ADB has a fund of $200 million for solar projects. It has not financed any coal power projects in the region since 2013.
Mr. Wijayatunga said that promoting regional integration and co-operation is critical to get the maximum resources and knowledge that they have to energise a shift towards low carbon growth with integrated solutions and sectoral operations to maximise this effort. “We have to accept that most of the energy sector is not standing alone and have to deal with cross sector operations to maximise its development. Aligning with global energy landscape and supply chain we needed an energy policy from 2009 because of the enormous change that we have seen in the energy sector. While cost of renewable energy against conventional energies such as fossil fuel was reducing, emerging new and innovative low carbon technologies were needed.
We have had global commitments such as sustainable goal developments to deal with universal access by 2030, a commitment to address the climate change. Meanwhile the ADB strategy for 2030 was formulated a couple of years ago to address the universal accesses,” he said.
Robert Guild Chief Sector officer, Sustainable Development and Climate Change Department, ADB also reiterated that they won’t be supporting any coal power plants in future.