Rich Western nations and their development banks love to parade their climate virtue and wag their fingers at Africa. They insist that the continent leapfrog from no energy to trendy renewables like solar and wind, even as wealthy nations run mostly on fossil fuels. With the biggest voting share in the World Bank, the U.S. has effective veto power over major decisions at the globe’s largest multilateral organization—and the moral duty to put its foot down.
Africa deserves the same shot at development that the West had. Sub-Saharan Africa—excluding relatively well-off South Africa—is home to 1.2 billion people, who together consume less electricity annually than Florida’s 23 million. An average person in these nations is getting by with direct or indirect access to only half a kilowatt-hour of energy a day. The average person in a rich country—those in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development—has access to nearly 40 times as much power.
Multilateral banks whose supposed purpose is ending poverty have widened this chasm by choking off funding to the fossil-fuel projects Africa needs to establish reliable, affordable energy. Solar power is great when the sun shines, but it can’t power cities at night or steel mills on cloudy days. Using more solar and wind substantially raises electricity prices to cover subsidies, lengthy transmission lines, and extensive backup generation.
Yet the West insists that Africa embrace solar and wind. The World Bank now diverts 45% of its financing to climate spending.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent aired a dissent in a speech in Washington last month. He said the World Bank must return to the basics of “poverty reduction and economic growth” and solve energy poverty using all types of generation.
Such a common-sense message should have been met with loud acclaim; it got crickets at the World Bank. A few days after his remarks, the bank’s steering committee made slight motions toward expanding energy access, opening the door to funding nuclear power, but held to its climate commitments. Germany’s development minister said she had insisted the bank keep its focus on climate change, citing the European Union’s large voting share.
The hypocrisy is stark. Germany still gets more than three-quarters of its energy from fossil fuels, including coal, as it pushes green energy on Africa. The U.K., with its extreme net-zero policies, still uses natural gas for one-third of its power. Even under the climate-obsessed Biden administration, the U.S. pumped oil like nobody’s business.
Europe responded to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and the pressure this put on their fossil-fuel access not by embracing renewable nirvana and the attendant lower quality of life. Instead, the Continent set about restarting coal plants and buying natural gas from around the world, along with quietly continuing to get a decent portion from Russia. This led to electricity shortages in poor countries such as Pakistan as European demand hiked prices.
Tired of development institutions’ climate lecturing, African leaders plan to open the Africa Energy Bank with an initial capitalization of $5 billion. The bank will finance a mix of projects, from offshore oil exploration to gas-fired power plants, although it is also open to renewables. This is a far more pragmatic approach to African energy.
But there is still a moral onus on Western institutions that claim to care about poverty to act like it—and Mr. Bessent can help. The Trump administration is conducting a 180-day review of United Nations organizations to see if these institutions have drifted from the U.N.’s original mission or out of alignment with U.S. interests. Before the review concludes, Mr. Bessent should make clear that the World Bank must end its climate funding targets if it wants to keep U.S. backing. The bank should focus all its development efforts first on investments that alleviate poverty. Anything less is wasteful virtue signaling.
Activists will wail about climate doom. But their math doesn’t hold up. Africa is responsible for only 3.8% of global emissions. The Group of 20 nations churn out over 80%, and last year China built two coal plants a week. If Western governments are serious about climate change, they need to invest far more in low-carbon energy research and development to drive innovation and eventually make green energy cheaper—not force expensive, unreliable options on others.
Right now, ending energy poverty across the world is the only moral action to take. The Trump administration should make doing so nonnegotiable.
Mr. Lomborg is president of the Copenhagen Consensus, a visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and author of “Best Things First.”