Can philanthropists help fuel a global clean energy transition?

At a summit this week in Kigali, Rwanda, billionaire and former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg announced plans to spend $242 million to boost clean energy in 10 developing nations, part of an effort to help them — and ultimately the world — steer toward a greener future.

Bloomberg already has spent more than a decade and hundreds of millions of dollars working to phase out coal and other fossil fuels, first in the United States and later in Europe. But while those campaigns were aimed at cutting the massive greenhouse gas emissions produced by the industrialized world, the latest initiative has a decidedly different target.

...Mohamed Adow, head of PowerShift Africa, a group that lobbies for climate policies across the continent, said if Bloomberg’s push helps pave the way for wealthy governments to invest far more in developing nations, it will be a positive step.

But he remains skeptical.

So far, Congress has not fully funded the more than $11 billion annually the president wants for international climate financing, Adow said, and other rich nations also “have been woefully inadequate” at delivering the money they’ve long promised.

“If we’re going to shift countries off fossil fuels, the scale of the investment needs to be in an entirely different ballpark,” Adow said in a text, noting that the Bloomberg Philanthropies commitment amounts to an average of $24 million per nation.

...“The good news is many of these countries are blessed with clean energy potential. But they need the finance to harness that and fund their energy transition,” he said.

“If we can combine the wealth of the rich world with the political will and green energy resources in the developing world, we can make great progress in addressing the ever growing climate crisis.”