This op-ed was originally published on the National Geographic energy blog In 2013, the World Bank pledged to stop loan­ing money for new coal energy projects[1], unless no finan­cially fea­si­ble alter­na­tives exist. Pres­i­dent Obama has said the same for the United States, “Today, I’m call­ing for an end of pub­lic financ­ing for new coal plants overseas—unless they deploy car­bon cap­ture tech­nolo­gies, or there’s no other viable way for the poor­est coun­tries to gen­er­ate elec­tric­ity (Pres­i­dent Obama, June 25, 2013)[2]^,[3].”In Kosovo a pro­posed coal-​​fired power plant has been under dis­cus­sion for over a decade. The prime fun­ders, iron­i­cally, are the World Bank and the U. S. government.
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