Environmental groups have urged the World Bank to allow Dan Kammen, the bank's chief technical specialist for renewable energy, to do a special assessment of Kosovo's options. Kammen did an assessment in Malaysia, which then canceled a proposed coal-fired power plant in favor of alternative energy options. There is a standoff among members of the [[World Bank]]'s board of directors over a proposal to eliminate coal financing for all middle-income countries. The Obama administration and World Bank officials argue that under the proposed energy strategy, coal lending is permitted for the poorest countries, and Kosovo fits into that category. Environmentalists argue that while the coal plant might meet the letter of the energy strategy, it does not meet the spirit of it, which is to develop cleaner energy sources for developing nations.<ref name=lf/>
Following a World Bank report released in January 2012 that supported the construction the the proposed coal-fired power plant in Kosovo, environmental groups maintained that entrenched support for the coal project within the US State Department had obscured thinking about new, cleaner possibilities. The Sierra Club and others argued that the World Bank's analysis showed no near-term need for additional baseload capacity and noted that analysts had not actually calculated all of the costs involved in the plant or addressed Kosovo's needs for peaking power.<Ref name=duke/>
===Estimated cost of electricity===