Coal, oil and gas companies regularly oppose environmental measures, arguing that they will lead to less development opportunities for poorest countries. One of the biggest private coal company even claimed that the spread of Ebola could have been avoided thanks to coal.

The World Bank denied this argument. On the opposite, even if  1 billion people still have no access to energy, coal remains a part of the current problems. The social cost of coal is very high as people in developing countries suffer from respiratory diseases. Moreover, the expansion of the use of coal worsens the climate change effects, whose first victims are the people of these countries.

With these remarks, Rachel Kyte did not close the door for the World Bank to fund coal projects, but she declared that it would be restricted to particular cases.