The World Bank is under fire after its officials racked up a carbon footprint equal to the annual emissions of 350 cars while travelling to a United Nations climate summit in Azerbaijan last November, The New York Post has reported.
A leaked attendee list showed 254 World Bank officials took jets to the oil-rich nation for the 12-day summit. Their round-trip travel from Washington, DC, to Baku generated at least 1,500 metric tonnes of carbon emissions, according to the UN’s Carbon Emissions Calculator.
Citing data from the US Environmental Protection Agency, the report noted that this level of emissions equals the annual greenhouse gas output of 350 cars or the energy consumption of 200 American homes.
“This is a massive display of hypocrisy from the gilded elites of the World Bank,” Nile Gardiner, director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at the Heritage Foundation, told The NY Post. “They lecture the world on environmental policy while literally living the high life in complete contradiction to everything they preach.”
A World Bank spokesperson defended the practice, saying private jets were used only as a “rare exception” when security, efficiency, or cost made commercial travel impractical.
The revelations follow previous reports of lavish travel arrangements within the World Bank. In November, The NY Post uncovered that senior officials booked Qatar Airways’ premium Q Suites when travelling to Azerbaijan 18 months before the summit.
Further scrutiny was drawn to World Bank President Ajay Banga after social media posts showed his assistant, Jessica Phan, aboard a private Gulfstream jet with him. Ms Phan, a former Biden and Obama administration official, later deleted the images from her Instagram. Mr Banga also chartered a Gulfstream jet to attend the UN climate conference.
The World Bank has already been under fire for how it handles climate funding. In October, British NGO Oxfam accused the institution of “losing track” of $24 billion meant for climate initiatives.
Former Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross suggested that DOGE-head Elon Musk, who has pledged to eliminate government inefficiencies, could target the World Bank’s spending.
“Luxury travel is a long-standing feature of development finance,” former US Ambassador Joe Rogers, who served under President Ronald Reagan, told The NY Post. “Apparently, this is standard fare for discussing the poorest of the poor. It is absolutely appalling and a slap in the face to American taxpayers.”