The US Treasury Department has released guidelines calling on the World Bank and other Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) to significantly reduce the funding they grant to coal power stations, encouraging them to ‘ensure full consideration of no or low carbon options ...’ before approving funding to coal-fired power generation projects in developing countries.

Royal Dutch Shell will face scrutiny on its controversial investments in the Canadian tar sands at its next Annual General Meeting.  A shareholder resolution announced this week calls on Shell to have an external review carried out of the business risks associated with its huge investments in oil extraction from the tar sands.  The motion will be debated and voted on at the company's AGM in May.

This post first appeared in Plan C - http://planc.typepad.com/plan-c/  in December.  Nick Kettles is a freelance journalist and broadcaster – www.nickkettles.co.uk

The recriminations for the failure of the Copenhagen Climate Change summit to deliver a more robust deal on CO2 reductions are continuing in earnest.  Ed Miliband has, like President Obama, blamed China.  Environmental commentator George Monbiot has in turn blamed the US Senate.  Someone, somewhere will definitely be blaming Canada.  They always do.

Yet, it’s possible that the real reasons are far less obvious, than the current identity parade suggests.