Civil society comments to EIB's and the EBRD's energy lending

Quote from the WWF comments: "The EIB’s objective should support the EU’s 2050 decarbonisation goal. An EIB substantively revised energy lending policy should precludes investment in assets that lock‐in high carbon emissions and instead focuses on delivering a European zero‐emission energy system by 2050."

As the first step in its review of its Energy Operations Policy, the EBRD asked for input on its current policy before moving on to write the new sectoral strategy. In our comments, Bankwatch highlighted the current policy's lack of restrictions on climate-damaging projects including coal power plants and the need for the bank to adopt strict sustainability criteria in order to ensure that it supports only truly sustainable renewable energy.

In Autumn 2012, the European Investment Bank has launched a process of reviewing its energy lending policy in order to align it better with EU climate goals. Bankwatch's comments lay out the case for fossil fuels to 'fall out' of the EIB's future energy lending policy - and for an overall more ambitious, and substantially more climate-sensitive EIB energy policy.

In their comments on the upcoming new EIB energy policy the German NGO urgewald and the environmental coalition Klimaallianz focus on issue of coal lending and call for no more public money support for coal fired power plants, neither new plants nor retrofitting.