The World Bank has announced it will stop funding oil and gas projects from 2019. Annie Pickering, a campaigner at UK student campaigning network People & Planet, has told Sputnik it marks a “seismic shift” towards renewable energy.

At a climate summit in Paris on Tuesday, last week, the President of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, said it would stop financing oil and gas exploration and extraction from 2019.

“In exceptional circumstances, consideration will be given to financing upstream gas in the poorest countries where there is a clear benefit in terms of energy access for the poor and the project fits within the countries’ Paris Agreement commitments,” the World Bank added, by way of clarification, according to Sputnik.

The summit also heard Dutch bank ING announce plans to reduce its investments in coal power generation to zero by 2025 and Norway’s giant Storebrand pension fund unveil an increase in its fossil-free investments to US$3 billion.

Stephen Kretzmann, the executive director of Oil Change International, said it was “hard to overstate the significance of this historic announcement” by the World Bank.

Campaigners against fossil fuels in Europe also welcomed the move.

“This seismic shift away from fossil fuel extraction shows that the divestment campaign is winning at all levels. But there is still a long way to go,” Annie Pickering said.