World Bank Drops 45% Climate Finance Target, Extends Action Plan

The World Bank is dropping its pledge to route 45% of financing into projects with climate benefits and will keep its Climate Change Action Plan running, according to Climate Home News.

Future lending will be judged on results rather than a spending ratio, with the lender tracking greenhouse gas emissions avoided and the number of people better shielded from climate risks.

The target being scrapped had already been met. Climate finance nearly doubled to USD 39.2 billion in 2025, and 48% of the bank's financing carried climate co-benefits, clearing the level first fixed at COP28, per Climate Home News.

Between 2020 and 2025, that figure climbed from USD 17.2 billion to USD 39.2 billion, more than doubling over the period, according to Carbon Brief.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent welcomed the plan's coming expiration and pressed the lender to "shift its myopic focus on climate" and abandon what he called its "distortionary" 45% target.

Across 2020 to 2025, the bank counted USD 164 billion as financing with climate co-benefits.

Emerging economies took the biggest shares of those funds since 2020, led by Turkey at USD 10.3 billion, India at USD 9 billion and Nigeria at USD 6.3 billion, according to Carbon Brief.