WASHINGTON, August 14, 2006 - The World Bank Group (WBG) announced today that $680 million was committed in fiscal year 2006 to New-Renewable Energy (New RE) and Energy Efficiency (EE) projects. This is an increase of 48 percent when compared to last year's commitments. This is more than double the annual growth rate the WBG committed to achieve two years ago in Bonn .
In fiscal year 2006 (July 2005-June 2006), the commitments by the WBG, the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), along with the Carbon Finance operations, and co-financing support from the Global Environment Facility (GEF), comprised of the following:

• $490 million for EE.
• $190 million for New RE -- wind, solar, biomass, geothermal (80 percent of New RE commitments), and hydropower up to 10 MW per facility (20 percent).
• The subtotal of $680 million can be compared with the WBG commitment of $459 million towards New RE and EE projects in fiscal year 2005.
• In addition, in fiscal year 2006 the WBG committed $192 million for hydropower projects which were larger than 10MW per facility.

The total amount of funds committed by the WBG for Renewable Energy (RE) and Energy Efficiency (EE) programs in 2006 was $871 million, according to the newly released data. Commitments for RE and EE were 37 percent of total power sector commitments and 20 percent of WBG total energy sector commitments in fiscal year 2006, which reached $4.4 billion. In fiscal year 2006, the WBG supported 62 RE and EE projects in 35 countries.

Source: http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/NEWS/0,,contentMDK:21022967~pagePK:34370~piPK:34424~theSitePK:4607,00.html

Contacts:
World Bank: Kristyn Schrader +1-202-458-2736
Kschrader@worldbank.org
IFC: Rita Jupe +1-202-458-8967
Rjupe@ifc.org
MIGA: Angela Gentile +1-202-473-3509
Agentile@worldbank.org