Hundreds of millions of British aid 'wasted' on overseas climate change projects

[dutchman]

"The current crop of climate change and renewable energy initiatives are showing strong signs of being the most negligently conducted and scandalously wasteful to date" Dr John Constable



Serious questions are raised today over hundreds of millions of pounds of British taxpayers’ money being ‘wasted’ on climate change projects such as an Ethiopian wind farm and Kenyan solar power plant.

A Telegraph investigation shows little benefit so far from a £2 billion foreign aid programme to tackle climate change that was established eight years ago.

One scheme, costing £260m of UK taxpayers’ money, has produced only enough renewable electricity to power the equivalent of just 100 British households - about the size of a typical street.

Projects including solar parks in Kenya and Mali, a rubbish-burning power plant in the Maldives and wind farmer project in Ethiopia are all earmarked for funding from the scheme.

The Telegraph investigation raises major concerns over the use of international aid money to fund complex renewable energy schemes in some of the world’s poorest countries.

It will also reignite the row over the Government’s commitment, championed by David Cameron, to ring fence the £12 billion annual foreign aid budget, which is fixed at 0.7 per cent of national income.

Critics have accused the Government of “scandalously wasting” taxpayers’ money on the schemes.

While officials insist publicly the climate change schemes are working and should only be judged in 2023 at its end point, the department for International Development (Dfid) has expressed concern over delays to projects and the management of them.

One senior source said ministers inside Dfid are questioning whether the money would have been better spent on humanitarian causes instead.

The complex set of schemes - known as the Climate Investment Funds (CIFs) - are run by the World Bank, with almost one-third of the £6.75 billion total funding provided by the UK government. No other country has put in so much cash.

The funds, consisting of four separate schemes, are intended to kick start green energy projects such as the building of large-scale wind and solar farms in poorer countries and environmentally friendly public transport schemes.

One of the four schemes - the £630 million Scaling Up Renewable Energy Project (SREP) - was set up with the help of £268 million financing from Dfid and the now defunct Department for Energy and Climate Change.

But at the halfway point of the project to provide renewable energy and improve energy access in 28 of the world’s poorest countries, including Haiti, Ethiopia and Bangladesh, little appears to have been achieved by way of effective results.

To date, just three SREP-funded projects - two in Honduras and one in Nepal - are producing either green electricity or improving access to it. A further 20 approved projects are not making any positive impact, according to an annual report published at the end of last year.

SREP has so far produced just 276 MWh of electricity - which experts suggest is equivalent to powering about 100 British households. Its target by 2023 is to produce 2,600 GWh - meaning it is currently producing just 0.01 per cent of the electricity expected in six years’ time.

Read more: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/03 ... te-change/

[Melisandre]

Climate change is a natural sequence the earth does and has for centries .
More fit they gave them fresh drinking water as they always claim they drink dirty water with all the adverts on tv trying to emotionally black mail us for us to give more.