Climate Action
The fight against climate change is a priority for the European Investment Bank. The EIB supports the EU’s goal of low-carbon and climate-resilient growth within and outside the Union. It is one of the biggest providers of finance in this area of all international financial institutions: in 2011, the Bank invested EUR 18bn in climate action, of which EUR 16bn in the EU (30% of its overall lending). Acting as a financial leader supporting innovative clean and climate-resilient technologies, the EIB is committed to acting as a catalyst for investment with partners both inside and outside Europe.
The EIB’s climate action focuses both on low-carbon investments that mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and on climate-resilient projects that improve adaptation to climate change impacts. Financing activities in these two areas are developed within the framework of the EIB’s sectoral lending policies and approaches, particularly those concerning energy, transport, water, wastewater, solid waste, forestry, and research, development and innovation (RDI). Climate change considerations are mainstreamed in all EIB sectoral policies and integrated into all operational activities. They are also systematically included in all EIB project appraisals to make the Bank’s lending portfolio across all sectors more climate-friendly.
Joint publications
- Joint MDB Report on Adaptation Finance 2011
- Joint MDB Report on Mitigation Finance 2011
- Bilateral Finance Institutions & Climate Change - A Mapping of Public Financial Flows for Mitigation and Adaptation to Developing Countries in 2010, UNEP EN
- Bilateral Finance Institutions and Climate Change - A Mapping of 2009 Climate Financial Flows to Developing Countries, UNEP EN
Useful links
Meeting climate and energy challenges
The EIB plays a major and growing role in providing finance to the renewable energy sector. In the past five years its annual lending increased more than tenfold to reach EUR 6.2bn in 2010. This film illustrates the EIB’s financing for renewable energy as one of the pillars of the Bank’s climate action.
The EIB and sustainable development
This film tells the story of a successful financing partnership. Helios Bay is the New Caledonia's first photovoltaic plant located on the coast 40 km from Nouméa. With an installed capacity of 2.1 MW, this plant can feed into New Caledonia's grid 3 million KWh a year, equivalent to the consumption of 800 to 1 000 homes.
