ImpactAlpha, September 30 – The World Bank’s new billion dollar “Accelerating Battery Storage for Development” program aims to triple installed battery capacity in developing countries by 2025.
The pledge was among a number of climate commitments made last week in New York at the One Planet Summit, hosted by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Bloomberg Philanthropies. The event, a follow-on to last year’s summit in Paris, was co-hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron, U.N. Deputy Secretary General Amina Mohammed, and World Bank President Jim Yong Kim.
“Not enough capital is flowing,” Bloomberg warned at the event. “The markets’ allocation of capital is a powerful weapon in the fight against climate change.”
Macron noted that one third of all global financing needs to be allocated to finance climate change mitigation and adaptation for the Paris Agreement to succeed.
To that end, the World Bank says its $1 billion in financing for battery storage should catalyze an additional $4 billion in public and private investments. The program aims to both fund and de-risk investments in utility-scale solar-plus-storage projects, mini-grids and other off-grid systems, and stand-alone batteries. It hopes to finance 17.5 gigawatt hours of battery storage in developing countries by 2025.
