Publications

The director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
is of Slovenian origin. He sent an open letter to the Slovenian parliament requesting to deny the state guarantee for a loan from the European Investment Bank (EIB) for Unit 6 at the Sostanj lignite thermal power plant.

The EBRD and the EIB are considering a loan of up to PLN 800 million to the Polish electricity utility ENEA to support a PLN 3.2 billion investment programme of the company's distribution network. Bankwatch's letter enquires what conditions will be placed on an EBRD loan to ENEA to make sure that the loan does not free the company's assets that it needs to invest in the Kozienice coal-fired unit number 11 in Poland.

A similar letter was sent to both the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (pdf) and the European Investment Bank (pdf).

This briefing outlines a number of aspects that - if improved - would enhance the European Commission’s proposal on the future EU budget and maximize benefits for the regions delivered by the future Cohesion Policy while contributing to reach the 2020 climate, energy and biodiversity targets and creating green jobs.

No sooner had rumours started circulating in January that Robert Zoellick would be stepping down as president of the World Bank than our friends at the Bretton Woods Project fished out their administrator passwords and fired up the World Bank President website once again.

There is more or less consensus among various stakeholders that developing decentralised renewable energy sources (RES) to feed local energy demand is the only way to build a long-term, truly sustainable, effective and fair way to satisfy Europe’s energy needs.

For a bank tasked to contribute to the 'balanced and steady' development of the internal market in the interest of the EU, the EIB's figures for its financing operations in 2011 (released last month at its annual press conference) induced a certain amount of head-scratching here at Bankwatch Mail.

'Carbon Rising', a new study from Bankwatch, catalogues the EIB's energy lending for the period 2007-2010 during which time the bank loaned EUR 40 billion to energy projects across the EU and EUR 8 billion outside the EU. This lending was guided by the EIB’s first energy policy 'Clean Energy for Europe: A Reinforced EIB Contribution', adopted by the bank in 2007.