The World Bank board of directors on Wednesday approved $265 million in financing \u200bto support construction of a new pumped hydropower storage \u200cplant in Morocco, two days after abandoning a goal to devote 45% of its lending resources to climate-related projects.<\/p>\n
The Ifahsa Pumped Hydropower Storage Project in northern Morocco \u200bwill serve as a giant rechargeable battery for the national \u200belectricity grid, pumping water to an upper reservoir during \u2060periods of high solar and wind energy production, the World Bank \u200bsaid in a statement.<\/p>\n
The water will then be released through turbines to \u200bgenerate electricity at times of peak demand, strengthening the reliability and resilience of Morocco\u2019s electricity system by providing flexible storage.<\/p>\n
The approval comes after the World Bank \u200bGroup on Monday said it would “retire” its goal to devote 45% \u200bof its lending resources to projects with climate benefits after pressure to do \u200cso \u2060from the United States (US) President Donald Trump’s administration.<\/p>\n
But the development lender said it would renew its Climate Change Action Plan (CCAP) without specific lending input targets to meet client country demand for such projects. Its Independent Evaluation Group will \u200bconduct a review \u200bof the CCAP.<\/p>\n
The \u2060300-megawatt Ifahsa facility will enable Morocco to integrate at least 1 gigawatt of additional solar and wind \u200benergy into its national grid, helping unlock around $1 billion \u200bin \u2060private investment.<\/p>\n
The bank said this would replace approximately 3 terawatt-hours of electricity currently generated from fossil fuels each year avoiding an estimated 1.7 million \u2060tons \u200bof carbon dioxide emissions annually.<\/p>\n
The World Bank \u200bsaid the project will generate 820 direct jobs annually during construction and additional employment \u200bopportunities across the energy sector.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
–Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":22902,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[44],"class_list":["post-38580","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-finance","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"The bank said this would replace approximately 3 terawatt-hours of electricity currently generated from fossil fuels.","published_date":"","news_description":"The bank said this would replace approximately 3 terawatt-hours of electricity currently generated from fossil fuels.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/38580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/38580\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38582,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/38580\/revisions\/38582"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=38580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}