NGO Forum on ADB flags risks following ADB’s approval of its amended Energy Policy

NGO Forum on ADB network and allies expresses deep alarm over the Asian Development Bank’s (ADB) newly announced amendments to its 2021 Energy Policy, now endorsed by the ADB Board through the R-paper. Despite ADB’s framing of the changes as “technology neutral” and responsive to rising energy demand, these amendments represent a significant regression in the Bank’s commitments to climate action, fossil fuel phaseout, and people-centered development.

For more than two decades, the Forum has monitored ADB policies to ensure development effectiveness, safeguard protection, and maintain accountability to impacted communities. The new amendments—particularly the allowance for methane reduction activities in upstream oil and gas fields, expanded eligibility for nuclear financing, and new support for critical minerals—highlight persistent issues in ADB’s approach: policy incoherence, inadequate risk assessment, and weak public consultation.

ADB’s claim of “extensive” civil society consultation sharply contradicts the experience of the NGO Forum on ADB, its members, and frontline communities. What ADB labels as consultation functioned largely as one-way information sessions, not genuine dialogue. Engagements were rushed, poorly announced, and conducted without timely disclosure of key documents—making meaningful participation impossible. Despite repeated inputs from the Forum and allied groups, major concerns were ignored, including opposition to methane-related upstream fossil activities, nuclear risks in countries lacking regulatory capacity, and inadequate safeguards for critical minerals.

"The ADB’s so-called 'Energy Policy amendments' are a reckless betrayal of climate justice and community rights. Pretending to be 'technology neutral,' the Bank greenlights risky fossil fuels, nuclear projects, and critical mineral extraction—while silencing civil society and ignoring the communities who will pay the price. The core aim of this policy is clear: create new markets for foreign tech companies, make massive, budget-risky investments in the name of climate solutions, and shift all financial and environmental risk onto borrowing countries. We will hold ADB accountable for this climate and social failure," says Rayyan Hassan, Executive Director of the Forum network.

This pattern reflects a broader institutional tendency toward performative consultation that treats civil society feedback as procedural formality rather than substantive input. ADB did not show how comments shaped the final amendments, nor did it provide a transparent record of responses—falling short of the Bank’s own commitments to transparency, accountability, and meaningful participation. This dismissal of civil society concerns is evident in the policy outcomes themselves, particularly in areas where CSOs raised strong objections.

One clear example is the amendment allowing methane leakage reduction in existing upstream oil and gas operations, which is particularly concerning as it opens the door to indirect support for fossil fuel expansion—contradicting the spirit and commitments of the 2021 policy. Measures to reduce methane leaks cannot justify prolonging fossil asset lifespans. Global climate science indicates both methane emissions and fossil production must decline sharply, and ADB’s new allowance risks undermining this trajectory while exposing communities to extended environmental and social harm.

"Unjustified and unjust—the ADB’s alarming support for nuclear power and critical minerals will expose Global South countries to new sources of pollution, environmental degradation, and community displacement. Along with its championing of waste-to-energy incineration, which contravenes its own Energy and Safeguards Policies, the Bank is pouring billions of dollars of loans into false solutions under the guise of a clean energy transition. Rather than placing communities at the center, vulnerable groups, women, children, informal workers, and all other affected persons are willfully kept at the margins," warns Brex Arevalo of GAIA Asia Pacific.

Equally troubling is ADB’s removal of its prohibition on nuclear power financing. Many developing member countries do not have the regulatory, governance, or technical capacity required to manage nuclear risks. Issues around long-term waste storage, decommissioning, safety in the context of climate-induced disasters, and disproportionate financial burdens remain unresolved. Nuclear investments are expensive, slow to deploy, and divert resources from proven, safer renewable solutions that are already viable across the region.

"ADB lifted the ban on nuclear financing without a clear rationale. The previous ADB energy policy identified four barriers to introducing nuclear power in developing countries such as nuclear proliferation, safety, waste, and cost. We have repeatedly asked ADB officials how ADB would overcome the four barriers, but we haven't received any meaningful and reasonable responses from ADB staff. I have been observing various ADB policy revision processes for 20 years, but this is the first time I have seen such a strange revision process," points out Yuki Tanabe from Japan Center for a Sustainable Environment and Society (JACSES).

ADB’s support for critical minerals for renewable energy will expose indigenous peoples to violence since the mining industry is notorious for human rights violations. Indigenous territories, which have rich mineral reserves, will be degraded for an energy transition that has been captured by the Global North. "We’ll see massive production of electric vehicles at the expense of the country’s last ecological frontiers. We are dismayed by this turn of events and decry the Bank’s support of mining," criticizes Maya Quirino from Legal Rights and Natural Resources Center (LRC).

Taken together, these policy shifts move ADB further from a just, equitable, and community-centered energy transition. A genuinely climate-aligned path requires accelerating renewable energy deployment, strengthening community-based systems, modernizing grids, and upholding rights-based processes that prioritize transparency and participation. None of these objectives requires supporting upstream fossil activities or high-risk nuclear technologies.

Now that the Energy Policy amendments have been approved, the Forum network and its allies urge the ADB to ensure that no extension of fossil fuel life will be in place while supporting methane-reduction activities in upstream oil and gas, restore its full prohibition on nuclear financing, and adopt strong safeguards for critical minerals to prevent social and environmental harm. The Forum also calls on the Bank to disclose transparently how civil society inputs were considered and to reform its consultation process so that future policy revisions meet basic standards of accountability and meaningful participation.

"This new ADB Energy Policy is nothing but a commercial agenda from the ADB, pouring loans into risky and expensive technologies like nuclear, critical minerals mining, and CCUS, putting borrowing LMICs like Bangladesh into deeper debt and climate risk. The policy update has not considered power supply and pricing, stranded asset risk, environmental and social impacts. This is a clear step back from the ADB in terms of climate responsibility, and a destructive step forward towards exploiting Bangladesh’s energy sector as a market for high-risk projects and pushing massive loans benefitting foreign companies," warns Hasan Mehedi from CLEAN (Coastal Livelihood and Environmental Action Network).

Communities across Asia and the Pacific deserve clean, affordable, and safe energy systems—ones that do not compromise their rights, security, or environment. As a major public development institution, ADB has the responsibility to uphold climate integrity and align its policies with a just transition grounded in science, justice, and the needs of people most affected by the energy crisis.