My name is Rahul Kitlo. I'm one of the practice managers in the Climate Change Group of the World Bank, and this session is really designed to discuss progress update around World Bank Group's Paris alignment process. To begin with a bit of a recap, let's really discuss what Paris alignment really means for the World Bank Group. In simple terms, Paris alignment to us means doing development in the era of climate crisis. How do we balance those objectives? How do we ensure that we focus on Poverty reduction and shared prosperity, while also focusing on aligning our operations such that they are consistent with and do not hinder the country's own long term emission reduction trajectories, as well as are informed about climate resiliency risks. Mr President, the World Bank in its Climate Change Action Plan 2021-2025 committed to aligning financial flows with the goals of the Paris Agreement. In April 2021, during our spring meetings, we also announced the timeline to achieving this alignment, and for the World Bank, the operations will be fully aligned 100% by July 1, 2023. IFC operations and MIGA operations, about 85% by July 1, 2023, followed by full alignment by July 1, 2025. There's a lot to discuss, it's a complex undertaking, and you know, the timelines are approaching, so this event is really about engaging with our internal and external stakeholders. We've had various sessions about what the World Bank Group has been doing about the Paris alignment process. And certainly there are a lot of questions about this. We also have been engaging with our CSO partners. We've received a lot of questions, including a letter from the Big Shift Alliance, Big Shift Coalition, which was received about a week ago. So let's discuss all of these issues jointly at this session. Mr President, allow me to introduce our distinguished panelists. First, joining us from Washington is Stepha Gembert, our Director of Operations Policy at the World Bank. Here in Sharm, we have Anoop Jagwani, who is the manager of climate and business at uh IFC. And together with that, we have Merli Barrodi, who is the director of Economics and sustainability at MIGA. So, without further ado, let me turn to Stefan for the first question. Mr. Stefan, July is approaching. It is certainly a complex process for the World Bank Group. Can you talk a little bit about what's been happening in terms of preparation? Where do we stand? What does the next 6 to 8 months of process look like, and specifically about how we're planning to engage even further with our partners internally and externally. Over to you, Stefan. Thanks, sir, Raul. Uh, very nice seeing you, uh, seeing, uh, Anou and Marie, and I'm assuming, uh, quite a lot of, uh, familiar faces in, in the room, um, we, we have regular dialogue on, on Paris alignment. Um, maybe before getting to your question, just to step back and, and restate a little bit what you said, Raoul what Paris alignment means for us. Um, as you said, uh, as an institution we're working with our, uh, client countries to reach their government objectives. And this is particularly important as we see poverty actually on the rise, uh, food insecurity in particular on the rise, um, major learning losses. So our work is anchored on our twin goals, poverty reduction and shared prosperity. The Paris alignment. is really a process by which we commit to ensure when we do this support on, on development that uh we do this in a way that is consistent with the country's own pathway towards low GHG emissions and that is uh climate resilient. Uh, in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement. So that, that's really, um, what is behind this process of Paris alignment. So, uh, this is something that will apply to every single operation, uh, we do, uh, starting July 1st, um, for us at the bank, uh, next, uh, next calendar year. So that's about 400 operations, uh, for every single one of these, uh, projects. We will now systematically assess whether the alignment, as I mentioned, both on the mitigation side and on the adaptation side is, is something uh we are very comfortable with. So you can imagine the scale of, of doing this. It's, it's a huge challenge. Um, but we feel it's absolutely worth it because, I mean, I think it's been a key topic of, of the discussion, uh, at, at the COP. We, we, from our, from our country climate and development reports, we really feel that climate and development challenges are going hand in hand. Uh, countries have actually, if you take the energy sector, they have uh an enormous opportunity to expand renewable energy while meeting, uh, their growing demand for electricity, improve energy security, and, and reduce emissions in the, in the energy sector. Um, so a lot of synergies, but still, um, a, a very big uh task ahead of us. So now back to your question, I'm very happy to report that, um, we're on track, uh, to, to ensure that all of our financing is priced online on July 1st next year. It's, it's not easy. Um, it's not, um, only a commitment to, uh, ensuring full alignment, but it's also, uh, documenting, um, this Paris alignment, documenting in line with, uh, a rigorous methodology, um, itself consistent, uh, with the principles we've already agreed with other MDBs, um, on the alignment. Um, and, and that, that, um, Rigor and transparency is, is really important to allow for more systematic and, and transparent reporting. Um, this is a massive undertaking. Um, we, we've made some, some progress, um, but still have to train thousands of our staff, and management, um, reviewing, updating, uh, our internal processes to make sure, again, it's not, um, some of our operations, it's every single of our operations. Um, and then we, we need to have the, the control framework to ensure our teams are, are really well prepared to, to implement the approach. And another aspect of the, of the process that and the complexity for us is um this has broad implications for um our, our portfolio, um, as has been also discussed in uh in CHA, um, no one in the world provides more climate finance to developing countries that the World Bank Group does. And so given the scale of, of this financing and, and, but also the diversity of the client context and the sectors we engage in, um, We need to ensure that we follow a rigorous and, and very deliberate, uh, process. Um, we want to make sure what we do makes sense in Chad, ***, and Ghana, but it's also makes sense in Egypt, Philippines, and Peru. Uh, we need to have, uh, principles that are common across sectors, but we also need, uh, to have more, uh, implementation and, and, and how to list, uh, that are more, uh, sector-specific. Um, what Paris alignment means in the energy sector will be different from what it means in, in agriculture or in transport. Um, so we have, um, all of our, um, uh, best experts thinking through these issues, uh, and it's a, it's a, it's a whole, whole air on deck type of effort. And final point to your, your question on on engagement, um, we, we've really advanced quite well about, uh, technical and internal preparation and deliberation. So we're planning to, uh, discuss with our board of directors quite soon, also update, uh, our clients because we feel it's really important, uh, that, that we, uh, report and, and, and brief them fully. Uh, we've, we've been engaging, uh, quite actively with key external stakeholders, uh, including CSOs, government and the private sector on our approach. Uh, we had, um, substantive discussions, um, with, with these groups at the annual meetings and, and another discussion now. Um, we're working hard to ensure these methods are, are, are robust, applicable to all sectors, and, and adaptable to country specific circumstances. Um, and as we work through these issues, uh, we will publish the principles of our price alignment per instrument and per sector, uh, before our spring meetings. Let me get back to you, uh, Rob. Thank you very much, uh, Stefan, for that uh comprehensive response. Uh, clearly this is a massive undertaking and a huge rollout that's uh underway at the World Bank. But let me pose a follow-up question to you about uh what does this mean in terms of the shift in the approach in our operations. Um, how do we do development differently beyond just a checkbox of saying that operations are Paris aligned? Can you shed some more light on that? Absolutely, and that's a very, uh, critical question, um, because this, this has to be a, a process that is, is rigorous and, and really, um, makes a difference. Now, this is not necessarily a process that will translate into uh a major shift in our portfolio on, on July. First, um, in part because in, in many ways we've been working the spirit of, of the Paris Agreement for, for some time. Um, so, uh, you know, and, and we have a number of, of projects. I'm thinking, for instance, a project in education or in health or project that build rurals to give uh communities access to services and markets. Um, those, uh, are in our portfolio and, and will continue to be in, in our portfolio. As, as I said earlier, we have, uh, we are one of the biggest provider of climate finance that to be done, uh, last year alone. Um, we're already financing a lot of, uh, renewable energy and energy efficiency, uh, projects, um, for instance, uh, over 5 billion of renewable energy generation projects over the past couple of years. Um, on, on the adaptation side as well, we've been screening projects for climate and disaster risks, um, for, for many years now. Uh, we've been doing GHD accounting in, in quite a few sectors like agriculture, environment, transport, energy, extractive, water, urban. Um, so we're building on, on quite a bit of expertise and, and commitments, but what will be new just to reinforce the points that I, I mentioned uh earlier is how systematic we're gonna be in, uh, applying a methodology to every single operation and how we're gonna, uh, add to all of our project documentation, uh, transparent, uh, explanation. As to, uh, the deliberation of Paris alignment. So all operations, um, and starting July 1st. All operations will include a documentation about um the nature of the project and, and to what extent um we came to the, the conclusion that it was Paris aligned on the mitigation and adaptation side. Um, so those uh publicly available documentation would really help us having more productive conversations also in, in the future as we learn about this process and as we can look specifically at one case at a time. Um, one country, uh, uh, environment, one sector specific, uh, uh, case, um, look at this, uh, cases and have further, uh, debates about, uh, what makes, uh, for a Paris online, uh, project. So we really expect that over time, um, as I said, this will be a learning by doing exercise and we'll keep updating, um, our knowledge and methods to build on the, on the, on the experience we gather and the feedback we get. Um, uh, by documenting, um, the Paris alignment at the project level. So, um, I, I really see this as a, as a start of a conversation, something that we expect to continue, uh, in the future. Um, many thanks, uh, Stefan. It's clearly, uh, across the life cycle of our programs and projects engaging with the clients as well as comprehensive across the organization. Uh, so many thanks for your responses. Let me turn to our colleagues in the room here. Um, I know, uh, IFC works uh a lot with the private sector. Uh, I'm sure you get a lot of questions around why. Paris alignment timeline is slightly different for IFC uh than the World Bank. Can you speak a little bit about that? Why it takes longer for IFC to achieve this Paris alignment? Thank you, Raul. Uh, took a few seconds for that to come on. I, I have a quick question for the crowd, for our CSO colleagues here. How many are familiar with the Paris alignment framework for the of the MDBs? Just a show of hands. Excellent. So the number of you who know and a few who don't, um, so I, I wanna emphasize a couple of points that Stefan said before I get into this. Um, Stefan talked about the massive undertaking that says, you, the, uh, you know, in Article 2.3 of the Paris Agreement we talk about low GHG climate resilient development. So we've got to look at every project that we do. Uh, with that lens and, and to give you a sense, uh, you know, we commit about 300 projects a year, but we look at many more before that. So when you look at each project with that lens, it's a massive undertaking. All of you are familiar with the, uh, inflation Reduction Act, the big, big, uh, legislation in the US. The implementing rules and guidelines in most cases will take more than a year to come. So it's no different when we put out a framework we have to translate that down to who does what in the team, how do we develop sector by sector specific approaches and, and then cascade it down and capacity building. Stefan referred to all of these things, capacity building internally and with clients. So these are the. Things that take really a lot of time so getting to the specific question of uh why IFC is taking longer is when we looked at our portfolio and many of you know we've been doing climate finance for a long time. We saw that about 85% of our portfolio was aligned along one vertical, which is the mitigation vertical, but we didn't have a systematic way of looking at climate risk in our business, so we said, OK, if we are actually to implement this and there were unknowns, unknowns for the for the balance 15%, we, we just didn't know. What we're dealing with, especially with many of the IDA countries where many of you know that the almost 30% of our business is IDA countries, we don't know the capacity in those, uh, countries. So if we look at that, we didn't know what we were dealing with. So we said, OK, let's commit to this 85%, and then we will, uh, take a little bit more time to figure it out. But let me tell you, in reality, we've started looking at every project with a Paris alignment lens from, uh, last year, so the process has already started and, and we've already going about the process and we think we'll achieve the timeline earlier, but the heavier lift will be on really the client capacity building, especially related to FIS, and I will come back to that later, Raul. Thank you very much Anoop. uh, Merli Miga also works with uh the private sector. So basically the same question to you. What has been your experience and uh how do you think uh uh uh MIGA will take uh uh slightly longer to achieve uh uh alignment with Paris Agreement goals? Well thank you so much for the question and thanks for inviting Miga to be part of the panel today. Um, so really building on, uh, what Stefan was saying and Ano is saying, Miga has really been intensifying the work we've been doing on. Ensuring that we are ready to align our projects with the goals of the Paris Agreement, 85% of our projects in July 1, 2023 and then 100% by July 1, 2025. Now I think as colleagues have said this is not an easy task, but I think at MIGA we've really warmed to our ability to achieve this goal, and partly that reflects the fact that we've been hard at work over the last year to really make Paris alignment something that everyone in the organization at MIGA is absolutely 100%. And committed to so while our projects may only be 85% aligned by July 1st, 2023, 100% of our staff will be aligned with the goals of the Paris Agreement, and they in fact are aligned currently. So what have we done to make that happen? Well, first, what we've done is to look at all of our business lines and do a deep dive to see where our projects would perhaps easily fit. Within Paris alignment goals and objectives and where perhaps we might struggle going forward, so we've been able to identify ex ante where we might need to spend extra time on certain projects or certain types of sectors that we work on in our various business lines. So this has really helped us to anticipate where we might find bottlenecks around areas of Paris alignment and how we can enhance them. Before we actually perhaps encounter the problem in a real project, Second, what we have also done is had a really strong dialogue with our clients. We have reached out to our clients and found that they're all on a very different trajectory with respect to how they are going about approaching the whole climate action agenda, but what we have found, despite where they are on that journey. Whether they've just begun that journey or whether they're very far along, they're really eager to talk to the World Bank and the World Bank Group and MIGA about what we're doing and how we're making the change. So we found this an incredibly powerful way to get MIGGA staff and MIGA management energized around the entire agenda of Paris alignment of our projects. A third thing we've done is develop some simple tools and guidance notes for staff so that everyone has confidence that they are knowledgeable about what it means for a project to be Paris aligned. So this has really helped perhaps diffuse the fear that some staff had that this might be something that was just too difficult or too challenging for us to tackle. And then another thing that we have done that has really, really helped us is the training we've done. Now we've done training across MIGA, but what we've also done, as sort of Anoop was alluding to, every project that we have been working on in the last year and a half, uh, has actually been. Looked at for Paris alignment. So every project that we've brought to our initial committee meetings where we look at our projects, those have been diagnosed as to what the challenges are with Paris alignment or whether they in fact are Paris aligned already. When we go to our final approval meeting, we've looked at whether the project is Paris aligned or not, and then if the project is not Paris aligned, we've talked. To our client and try to see ways that we could enhance the design of the project to ensure it was Paris aligned. So this has been enormously impactful in having everyone at MIA on the same page with respect to Paris alignment. So I think this has been one of the perhaps most important things that we've done. Another very important thing, however, we've done is just to hire more climate specialists. Specialists who are working on the business development side, on the underwriting side, and on the climate analytics side, and this has also helped us to be able to scale up what we're doing. So, uh, we now feel I. From where we started, we feel that we're 100% committed to Paris alignment, to having our projects fully Paris aligned, and I think it's been a long way that we've already come to make that happen for 85% of our projects on July 1, but all of our projects now are being assessed for Paris alignment, and at our concept review stage we are ensuring that those projects will be Paris aligned when we finally bring them to the board. Thank you very much, uh, Merli. So it's not really the portfolio, it's also the organization that you are really putting behind it. Uh, let me come back to Anoop. Um, one of the important features of, uh, IFC's portfolio is intermediated financing, right? So, can you talk a little bit about how you're approaching achieving Paris alignment in the financial intermediation type space and what issues that you encounter there? Think so, uh, that's, that's not an easy one, and, and I say it's not easy because you can imagine about half our business is with financial institutions and you know of the of the 12 billion or so that we commit and this is. You're actually looking at a bank, a financial institution like an IFC, like the bank, as a lending institution that needs to align its operations with the goals of the Paris Agreement. So when we, when we looked at that aspect, we said, OK, what are our instruments? So for those of you not familiar and if you look at the EBRD methodology, ours is very similar because we MDBs are working together on this, is to say there's a use of proceeds and there's a counterparty approach where we, when we know where our money is going to exactly, then we can uh clearly put the criteria that it is Paris aligned. When we get to the point of counterparty level Paris alignment, it's a much heavier lift, and, and this is where I want to add a couple of things where it's not the IFC alone will be able to do that with its investments. It's because these banks need the capacity, they need the regulatory framework to help them. So again, let's go back to the two main verticals, which is mitigation and adaptation. So when you go to a bank and say, hey, I want you to align your projects with the goals of the Paris Agreement, now you're helping them look at their portfolio and their business and so you've got to green that you've got to decarbonize that, and at the same time you've got to make it climate resilient. They've got to start assessing the location of their projects, what climate risks their projects are exposed to, at what level you need uh tools for that. You need, uh, granular data at the country level, the risks that are posed for them to actually map out and assess that climate risk. So it's a really heavy lift when when banks are actually going about it. So capacity building has become the fundamental thing that we look at in in many of these institutions. And what we're trying to do is we've started a conversation with the public sector as well as to how can the regulator, the central bank, put in something around climate risk for all banks. It, it, it can't be just the banks that IFC is working with. Let's level the playing field. Let's have, uh, the central bank put out regulatory guidelines for banks to do this. So on the intermediate financing side we've taken different approaches. Uh, the, the simple one, of course, is the use of proceeds. We know where the money is going. In the counterparty approach, it's a lot of capacity building and setting out pathways and helping them, but at the same time working with the regulator to try and level the playing field and provide guidance from that end. Thank you. Thanks so much, uh, Anno. Uh. Marie, last question to you before we turn to the floor for some questions. Uh, you've certainly been hard at, uh, this, uh, for the last one year, as you were saying, particularly since Glasgow COP 26. Can you share with us, uh, some lessons that you have learned through this process, and, uh, how you're approaching, uh, the rest of the rollout, uh, at MIGA? Yes, well, thank you very much. I think really building on what Ano was saying here, I think what we found is that Our clients are really interested in moving ahead with these objectives. When we first started these dialogues with our clients, we thought perhaps we were going to be more in a sort of compliance mode, sort of forcing a framework on them, but in fact, they are also eager to green their portfolios and to assess the climate risks in their portfolio and to try and address and manage them. So instead of finding a dialogue that was perhaps a tense one, or one where it was us against them type of thing, we found that this was a partnership that we were forming, that this was something that we could work with together, and I think of course we are very much engaged in this activity at the World Bank Group and at MIGA, Of course, there are other players in this field, and these are banks and our clients, our client banks and our real sector clients, they are also involved in the broader effort to move the agenda on climate action, and so we found a much more collegial and real way of working together that we hadn't expected, so that was a really pleasant surprise. I would also just say That we also realize we have work to do, so we've got another 6 months or so before we launch, and we know that we need to make sure we're working together with our colleagues at the Bank and at IFC, and that we're able to have a really smooth launch of Paris alignment to make it something that our clients are eager to engage with us on and staff feel really energized about. Uh, thank you again, Merli. It's really an ecosystem-wide approach, as you're saying. Uh, let's take a pause here and uh take some floor uh questions. Please raise your hand. The microphone will come to you, uh, and kindly introduce yourself, uh, uh, before you ask your question. Please go ahead. Thank, thank you very much, uh, Alison Doig from Recourse and also from the Health and Climate Network. Can I suggest that really suggest one simple solution? The IPCC says if we're to stay below 1.5, we need to end fossil fuel, new fossil fuels. The IAEA says if we're going to hit 1.5, we need to have no new fossil fuels. The World Health Organisation director, Doctor Treadross says our addiction to fossil fuels is self-sabotage. Continuing with gas within the portfolio, within your advisory committee, within your and coal also within your intermediaries investment is self-sabotage. So my suggestion is there's enough renewables out there, why don't you become the bank and the advisors for a renewable future only? Thank you. uh, let's go to the back of the room, another question there. Um, can you hear me? Yeah, um, so my name is Alice Pottier. I'm working at I4CE Institute for Climate Economics. I have a question for IFC, more specifically, um, I'm, um, many thanks for, uh, presenting your approach and also for highlighting the, the fact that capacity building will be key and that the engagement with regulators and creating the regulatory environment will be key as well, uh, to align financial intermediaries and, and local financial markets, um. My question would be, um, how much, uh how many resources do you have to do that and will these two major areas of work become major priorities for you moving forward, uh, especially with regards to these discussions on on the reform of IFI? Thank you. Thanks, let's take one more for this round, sir. Thank you very much, uh, Alexis Bonnell, uh, of the strategy department at the French Development Agency. And um I also had a question to our uh IFC colleague but could be to, to all of you actually. I was very much interested by your presentation on uh uh alignment depending on whether uh you know the use of proceeds or not, uh, and the use of proceeds route and the counterpart route. One of uh the things that uh we are uh actively discussing within the French development agency, but I know other MDBs and development banks. And also discussing that is that uh since alignment is a process where you are seeking continuous uh um uh uh ambition rise and, and you want to do more and more as you advance in this journey, um. What about uh undertaking counterpart alignment assessments in a more systematic manner, including when you know the use of proceeds? Wouldn't that be the next frontier of alignment and what would be your, your perspectives on that? Thank you, let's try to address these, uh, perhaps if I can bring in uh Stefan on the discussion on fossil fuels and how we try to address that as part of our Paris alignment process. Uh, would you want to start with that, Stefan, then I can also compliment. Sure, happy to. So, um, on, on that, um, in many ways, we agree, in fact, uh, when you look at our climate and development reports, they, they show that in many countries, uh, the energy mix, um, uh, will, uh, primarily grow on the renewable side. Um, that said, I think, as we stated in the, in our own action plan, um, there will be cases, uh, certainly not for coal, but for natural gas where the, the, the nature of the energy demand in terms of emergency or the lack of, of short-term uh renewable alternatives might require this to be, to be considered. Um, this will not be uh frequent and, and again based on at least our own uh sense from the analytics of the, of the climate and development reports in, in many countries, um, the, the bulk of, of the gross of, of energy access that is necessary will be delivered through uh renewable alternatives. Um, so that's, um, um, the way we're thinking about. again, I want to re-emphasize one of the points that I made earlier about the nature of the methodology being systematic, rigorous and transparent. And so in, in the few cases where we will feel comfortable uh that uh uh financing uh an investment in natural gas would be Paris online, um. Then the bar will be high to demonstrate that, and that rationale will be clearly articulated and transparently explained, so that we can have further conversation whether in that particular specific case, in that particular country at that particular time, it actually makes sense. Thanks, uh, Stefan, uh, quite a clear response there, so not much else to add. Uh maybe Anoop, if you want to talk about uh a question from AFD on counterparty uh approaches and uh whether that also extends as part of uh use of proceeds as a universal assessment. Thank you, thank you for that question. I was thinking as you were speaking, maybe you should be part of the team, uh, on this, uh, because we are doing, we're looking to do that. We are looking to add counterparty assessment. As soon as we can and that's basically because of the reasons that you mentioned after a while, you know, it's use of proceeds, but we want to get to the counterparty, uh, even if it's use of proceeds that's the goal, that's the objective, but it's really the heavy lift, so it's like a bit of a warm up with the use of proceeds we know we're gonna do that we know our, our money is directed for a particular cause. But in terms of just capacity, there's no capacity whether it's in within IFC now to do that, to roll it out, or on the client side in a in a bigger way to actually build that capacity at the client level is the challenging part. So, uh, but the goal is of course to go to that counterparty assessment for all investments at some point in the FI side. Burley, please go ahead and maybe if you can also try to uh answer the resource question from colleagues from I4CE around how much resources would we need for something like this and what are the the status of rollouts associated with that and perhaps Anup you can complement that later. Over to you. Uh, say that on this point that you raised, which I think it's a really, uh, excellent one, you know, building the relationship with the financial institution is the, the sort of building block from which you can then launch into more into deeper. And a more intense relationship where you're working as partners with them and not potentially forcing something that may not work for their institution. So I think you do raise a really good point, and maybe I think we should have you on the team. But I do think that, you know, part of the Part of the initial steps are building that relationship, and we just see that with our clients. Once you begin to have a dialogue and they see how we can add value to what they're doing and how that really adds to their own value proposition with their clients, it just becomes a really virtuous circle that, you know, works for us so many times. It's worked for us on the environmental and social front, and it really has. I see it also being replicated on the climate front, so I think it's part of building trust, and that trust can get you much farther faster than perhaps being in a position where you're imposing something on the clients. Sorry, thank you. So, no, uh, to your question, we don't have a lot of people working with the regulators on this. We, we are actually looking to partner institutions like the IMF, uh, working with the NGFS, uh, who might be able to help us to actually advance that dialogue rather than trying to do it that we don't see that as our mandate. We don't see that as our role, but we wanna work with. Partners on this and and I, I would just wanna add on on the um energy access piece, you know, it's an important one. I mean that question we we look at um you know how we actually work with our client banks so you know the green equity strategy, green equity approach and we're trying to integrate that into a Paris alignment approach as well. And so we will be working with our banks to look at that aspect of greening, uh, but we, we struggle bringing climate and development together. 600 million people are still without energy access, right? So when we look at people say uh renewables today are cheaper than gas, and I say I'm sorry, the statement is incomplete. Because renewables plus battery storage is the gas equivalent you're talking about. You're not talking about, you're not comparing apples to apples. You're comparing an intermittent source of power with a stable source of power. You cannot run a factory that runs only on solar power. You need the battery backup. So unless you have that today, the cost of that is. Three times that of gas, uh, with battery, uh, so if you add the two, sure, if you want to make developing countries pay that price, we're happy to wait this is where, uh, I think we need an engagement at a higher level in terms of saying this is where the donor capital comes in to change that. So we've looked at battery storage very careful, you know, as a replacement for the stable power that, uh, fossil fuels provide in some countries and, and I think. Just to compliment what Stefan said, the bar is extremely high to the board. We have to demonstrate why we are supporting a gas project, what are the alternatives, and if we don't have good answers, it will not be approved. So explaining that, and that's what we get into, and this is what I use the term, this is where the rubber hits the road. It's, it's conceptually nice. How do you actually translate it into development and climate together? Uh, thanks, uh, I know, we'll take a lightning round. Please keep your questions short. Uh, introduce yourself, please. I'm Aaron Pedrosa from the Philippines. We spoke on the same panel back in DC during the annual meetings. Just two questions on the intermediated finance, you said it's rather challenging. But as you know, you're a financial institution, the relationship with another financial institution, another bank, is also a fiduciary in nature. And the parameters set, for instance, IFC to a financial intermediary would determine that relationship. So that if you say that the funds being brought into a financial intermediary should not be used for fossil fuel expansion, that should work. But why not do that? Why still argue for more? It seems to us that you're still arguing for participation further in fossil fuel expansion through financial intermediary. That's why there has to be clarity. When you say Paris alignment, that should include financial intermediary. On the second point, A second question or a comment, uh, as to, again, the same question, uh, the same issue raised as to battery storage, etc. Why not the World Bank, all the banks under the World Bank, support technology, study, research into looking at the alternatives? It seems to us that you're furthering the argument for prolonged fossil fuel dependence. In that on that same panel, I said that in the Philippines we have 267,000 megawatts potential for renewable energy, excluding solar. So that potential alone could help address the 17,000 megawatt requirement for the entire country. Imagine how many times over, and that would also align you to the Paris commitment. Thank you, thank you. Any more double handers? OK, we'll take two more very quickly, sir, please. Hi, hi, uh, my name is Zen, uh, from Pakistan. So I have a quick question on this, uh, the integrated nature because you were talking about the integrated nature of things, right? And so most of the frameworks that are currently in place at the policy level in the energy sector, very similar to the point that was raised here. Have been left behind by World Bank advice in the 90s. These were privatization based, fossil fuel based, and even on the water side, that's hydroelectric, which is not typically talked about in Paris alignment concerns. It's extremely important because in a country like Pakistan, they're the number one. Exacerbators of flood risks and the World Bank currently supports hydroelectric with in full gung ho spirit exactly the way that it is now touting gas as a transition fuel which we know it is not for reasons that are that have been plainly evident in some of this research. So my question is, what are you all doing to walk back the influences of those dangerous frameworks which the countries are still. Implementing aside from the fact that you're also continually favoring these fuels which are not renewable and they're not clean, hydroelectric being the one I just highlighted, so my point is, and again to shorten it down, given that you're open to the idea of integrated concerns, what are the integrated solutions for the mess that you've left behind over all these years of these frameworks which the countries are still following, which is why a country like Pakistan continues to add fuels, including coal, which again came through your IFC arm even though in 2013 you had your moratoriums on it. So, uh, what are the plans in place for walking back those bad effects from the past and how do you plan to integrate that with the Paris alignment methodologies and the diagnostics you will run in them? And by the way, your CCDRs of Pakistan do not include any of these assessments, especially not on methodology. So just to make that clear so we have a blank slate on where to start from. Thank you. Uh, last question over there, please. I'll make it really quick. Um, I'm Sophie Richmond from Climate Action Network. At the start of the, um, session just now, you mentioned the big shift letter, um, and you've men, you've talked about consultation and transparency. I just wanted to know when will these methodologies, and, for example, the guidance around whether you will fund gas projects in which circumstances, actually be made available publicly so that we can have this dialogue and have real civil society consultation? Thanks very much. Uh, maybe, uh, we'll go in reverse order. Stefan, you want to come in on the last question on, uh, uh, from. Uh, the perspective of, uh, when we, uh, what the process we're following in terms of, uh, finalizing and making the methodologies and principles available, uh, and then perhaps, uh, Ano, if you want to come a little bit more on the energy sector question and then perhaps I can also, uh, add to that. Uh, Stefan, over to you to start, please. Thanks very much and if you don't mind, I've covered just two quick other points. So as I mentioned earlier, we will uh make sure all of this is, is, uh, public, the methodology are all public uh before spring meetings so that we can have conversations uh leading up to the spring meetings and during the spring meetings. Um, as I mentioned on gas, for instance, we, we will have a methodology. I, I know it's something um that uh you, you really want to have in-depth conversations. Um, to me, as important as, as the methodology will be to have conversations around individual cases, uh, in, in the very few cases where uh we, we will uh try and, and make the case of, of alignment. Um, and then two other quick points on, on financial intermediaries. most of that to um and when and but at the bank we also use occasionally uh financial intermediaries, uh, you know, for instance to finance small uh enterprises. I, I just want to be clear, we will design this methodology in a way that is not creating a loopholes for things that we wouldn't finance directly. So we're Cognizant that for financial intermediaries that are reaching out to hundreds of SMEs, the classic uh projects that the bank on our side would finance, that they will be sometimes challenges in terms of Of implementing uh and, and tracing funds, but this is in, in no way a way by which we're trying to keep uh some, some uh loophole into uh uh against the principles we're setting for direct financing. And the final point I wanted to cover is this question of battery storage. I'm not quite sure you want to ask the bank to be in the R&D space or to make huge technology bets. However, I think what we can do and actually do, um, and I want to use the example of solar, is to come in early and help structure uh the demand. For new technologies, um, not new technologies in abstract, but in, in the countries where we work. So we had an initiative jointly with mega and IFC called Scaling Solar, um, 1015 years ago at a time where the, the price of the technology was, uh, much higher, but that, uh, structure enables us to uh grow the demand. Uh, develop a market and, and, uh, was one of the contributors to bring the cost down. And so I think what you want to see is, is something similar on the other pieces of technology, so battery storage being one, where the, the bank, and I say we are not necessarily Here to pick and choose the, the technology of the future, but to help create the, the market signals and, and aggregation of, of demand uh to accelerate uh the, the technology development in, in, in a way that makes sense and is affordable for other countries, we work for. Back to you. Thanks very much. Anything else to add for our colleagues here on the stage? So I want to add, um, and, and thank you. Yes, we connected at the annual meetings and so let me, let me just clarify what we're talking about as I, as I keep doing. Um, the use of proceeds is the majority of our FI business, so working through intermediaries, uh, the use of proceeds is the primary instrument we have, and that's for gender, SME, climate, and housing. That's the bulk of our financing through SMEs, so they're not directed at fossil fuels. So that's, that's completely out. We've we've already said no to coal, and so it's about 1% of our financing of. All the ones we do for FIs, 1%, that is in the form of equity instruments that go at a bank at the top level of the institution that they can deploy anywhere. These amounts may be 30 $50 to $100 million equity investments that can be used across the operations of the bank. Again, let me repeat that represents less than 1% of our investments, and that's why we're talking about the challenges where we have limited ability to actually figure out where they're going. So what are we doing about it? What are the lessons we've learned? We've said, OK, uh, from the green equity strategy, green equity approach, we've said. You can do coal, and if you're going to do coal you've got to have a plan with us for a phase out under Paris alignment now we've got a way of working with them on the decarbonization strategy, so we've got approaches in place and just to emphasize, the majority of our financing today on the power side. Is renewable energy. Our renewable energy portfolio is more than 70% of our overall portfolio. It's from 20% about 8 years ago. It's more than 70%. It's every year we add more solar. Stefan talked about scaling solar. We are experimenting with battery storage, to your point. So we're bringing donor capital and. Where can we experiment with battery storage and solar so that we can accelerate those technologies. I can tell you when I started over 20 years ago, we were experimenting with solar as a technology in a hydro project to help the hydro project during the dry months use a solar panel at that time. There was a grant financing that allowed solar installation at the hydro project 25 years ago. This technology was still in its infancy, so we are at the same point in battery storage, and it's not commercial. It's not commercially viable, but we are. Working with several partners to try to commercialize it to bring scale to it and and do certain we have a project right now in India that we're experimenting on renewable plus battery and we continue to explore that but that's where partnerships with donors come in they can help us reduce that cost and bring scale to these areas so that we can drive down costs and bring it to other countries. Thanks, Anoop. Uh, so just to wrap this part of the discussion up, uh, two points from my side. I think just to also highlight together with what the work we are doing on the battery storage, uh, partnership, uh, this also extends to, uh, partnerships that we have on the hydrogen program, developing hydropower. With very stringent safeguard and design standards of international protocols that are International Hydropower Association protocols that are part of these discussions, really scaling up 4 times the solar capacity as Anoop was talking about just within IDA 20 context, so it is. very unified focus internally at the World Bank to accelerate these decarbonisation technologies, focus on coal phase out, and as Stefan was saying, to underline that Paris alignment is not about finding those loopholes but being extremely selective about the transition where there might be a role for gas, with default always being acceleration of renewable. Goals in any country context finally just to wrap up the question that came from this side, uh, the rollout process is underway, you know, I think uh we have a duty of care to finalize all of the methodologies we are consulting and engaging with our uh our board of directors and our internal and external partners, and, uh, uh, you know, we are on track for July. July 1, 2023 launch of Paris alignment, and you'll see a lot more information coming on that in due course. So I know there's a lot of interest and a lot of questions. We'll be here and we'll continue having a conversation, but let's wrap up this session. It's my pleasure to invite Jennifer Sara, our global director for Climate Change Group at the World Bank, to give us her concluding remarks. It's working, um, thanks a lot. How many of you were here on Tuesday at the MDB pavilion where we present? We also had a session like this, OK, not that many of you anyway. Update my technology because they are shuffling around and now I have an iPad. So I really want to thank all of you for coming tonight and Rahul also thanking you and welcoming him to our team. So you might have seen some new faces in the climate change group at the bank. I started July 1st. I was in water for the last 8 years, so, so it's, it's a jump in Raul. He's been based in Vietnam and is moving back to Washington. He'll be heading up our work on the Paris alignment with our teams, so really nice to have him here, and I do want to leave you with three key takeaways, going from what it means to our day to day operations to become Paris aligned. What it means to us as an institution. With uh in me. OK, sure. Thanks, um, and also working with the wider MDB community. We want to make sure that these methods are really robust and applicable across all of our global practices, and I know here we always talk so much about energy, a lot of attention is really on energy and transport and decarbonisation, and rightly so, but as a bank, we're committed to ensuring full alignment against everything, not just in the environment, water and energy, but we need to make sure that all these methods are also consistently applied in the non traditional climate sectors, as we call them, like education and health. So we're really bringing every single person along, every global practice, and we want to make sure we are committed to documenting this in line with a very rigorous methodology which is consistent with the MDB principles on Paris alignment, and all the MDPs are doing the same thing. We have one or two that are out in front, but all the other MDPs are also right now internally preparing all the detailed methodologies and discussing it internally at the institutional level with their boards. I think again, we always want to reinforce that we want to make sure we mainstream climate and development, and that's really important, so it's not going to be just we're going to check off a box, we are going to make sure that every single one of our lending operations are incorporating the most affordable, feasible and technologically advanced options for each country's specific context, and we believe technology R&D needs to come very, very quickly. We will be documenting every single operation and how they are aligned in every project document. If they're not aligned, they're not going to go forward, so that documentation will be there as part of our project documentation and we'll be able to show the robustness and credibility of our approach, and also build up a knowledge base by having these documentations and sharing them across the bank and also the other MDBs in that spirit that we're learning. We're building this as we go forward. We're also connecting the Paris alignment to all of our other climate commitments, and we're going to use the CCDRs really to help us out, and then using the pathways that are identified in the CCDRs will help inform the updated ambitions of the NDCs and LTS, so the countries' governments are responsible for their long term strategies and their NDCs. We're hoping that the CCDR and the methodology. That we're working with them on, they can then take them as they develop their long term strategies in a very open, transparent, participatory way at the country level with CSOs, with the private sector, with all stakeholders, and that again will feed into our Paris alignment assessments. Third, we're committed to working with the other MDBs, as you've seen in so many of the events this week, on developing the high level joint frameworks, and these are informing. Our own internal approaches, and again, we don't just limit ourselves to our approach on a project by project basis, but we incorporate the development needs that are country driven into our assessments. We know you're all keen to learn more about our approach, we will continue to engage with you over the coming months. Stefan just said, he said that's the target. OPCS set the targets that we're going to have this already. By the spring meetings, so we have our work well cut off, and it's an iterative process. We're going to be refining it, developing it, engaging as we put this forward and be able to come forward at the spring meetings and go live on July 1. Again, heartfelt thanks to all of you, to the panelists today, to Stefan in Washington. We've been working tirelessly on this way before Rahul and I joined the team, and really nice to have you here in the audience. So thank you very much. Thank you very much, Jennifer, colleagues, this is a very important topic, great to see passionate engagement, we will continue this engagement, but for tonight, let's sign off from Sharm el Sheikh. Thank you very much for your participation.

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