Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what estimate her Department has made of how much UK aid has been disbursed through the Private Infrastructure Development Group (PIDG); and what assessment her Department has made of the extent to which the PIDG has funded projects involving (a) gas, (b) coal and (c) oil.

DFID has disbursed $1,036 million to the Private Investment Development Group (PIDG) between 2002 and 2018.

During this 16-year period, PIDG has made a number of infrastructure investments in the poorest countries to increase access to power, some of which use fossil fuels to generate electricity. Of these investments, (a) $396.6 million has been to projects using gas as a fuel source, (b) $1.7 million using coal, (c) $141.9 million using oil, and (d) $210.2 million with mixed or hybrid fuel sources. The coal funding was for early-stage advisory services provided in 2008 to a prospective power project in Indonesia.

Over the same period, PIDG has invested $711 million in renewable power projects.

PIDG does not invest in the extraction of fossil fuels, with the exception of one-off funding of $500,000 (£273,000) in 2004 for technical assistance to the Government of Mozambique on the feasibility of establishing a coal mine in the town of Moatize in Mozambique. No follow-on funding was provided to support this project. PIDG’s strategy now rules out any investing in coal.