Ikea Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation pledge $1bn to renewable energy
The Ikea Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation have today pledged $1bn towards renewable energy and kick-starting a climate-conscious post-pandemic recovery.
In a bid to tackle climate change and energy poverty, the foundations have set up a platform to cut carbon emissions by one billion tons.
The platform, launching later this year, will let emerging economies jump straight to renewable energy bypassing environmentally harmful energy from finite fossil fuels like oil and gas.
The fund, which will be run as a public charity, aims to deliver clean and reliable power to 800m people and a further 2.8bn who have unreliable access.
“If global energy consumption doesn’t change from fossil fuels to renewable energy, we will not meet the Paris Agreement ambitions and millions of families will be left behind in poverty,” IKEA Foundation CEO, Per Heggenes, said.
“We need to be honest and recognise that the current approach is not delivering the impact the world needs in the time that we have.”
While financial backing for a green energy transition has increased at a global level, organisations still struggle to find investment-ready projects, the foundations said in a statement today.
“As a result, many emerging economies still depend on unreliable and polluting energy sources,” the statement said.
President of the Rockefeller Foundation, Rajiv Shah, said: “Millions of lives and trillions of dollars have been lost to Covid-19, forcing people back into poverty after decades of progress. The effects of the climate crisis will make this even worse, which is why we must invest now to reverse this downward spiral.”