Renewable Energy 2008
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www.eib.org |
The role of the European Investment Bank, an autonomous European Union (EU) institution, is to finance investment projects contributing to the balanced and sustainable development of the Union and its Partner Countries. Set up in 1958 under the Treaty of Rome establishing the European Community, the EIB operates as a bank and raises on the capital markets the bulk of the resources that it deploys to finance projects worldwide meeting the Union’s broad objectives.
In line with these objectives, the promotion of sustainable, competitive and secure energy sources and combating climate change ranks among the Bank’s top priorities.
The Bank’s policy for lending for energy seeks to promote:
sustainability
by promoting renewable energy sources, to reduce both dependence on finite
resources (such as oil, coal and gas) and the negative impacts of fossil
fuels on the natural environment, particularly through CO2 and other
greenhouse gas emissions;The EIB’s policy stance on energy therefore fully reflects the prominence of energy on the European Union’s policy agenda. The Commission’s Energy Green Paper of March 2006 was followed in March 2007 by the adoption of an Action Plan 2007-2009. Within this framework the EU has pledged to achieve a:
Meeting these targets will be an enormous challenge.
The EIB’s contribution concentrates on five priority areas:
Within its Corporate Operational Plan (COP), the Bank has established challenging targets to direct, and underscore, its contribution to energy lending:
These targets will be reviewed annually.
In addition to its direct lending activities, the EIB is also playing an expanding role in a number of initiatives to combat climate change – itself a key objective of Europe’s sustainable energy policy.
In particular, the Bank is contributing to the development of carbon markets, notably the EU’s Emission Trading Scheme (ETS). The Bank is encouraging the use of Kyoto-compliant carbon project credits as a project finance instrument, thus helping private and public entities to meet their carbon compliance obligations. In this respect, the EIB has already established three carbon funds, with the EBRD, the World Bank and KfW. In addition, it has recently launched a fourth fund to promote the long-term carbon market post-2012, after the expiry of the Kyoto Protocol.
Web: www.eib.org