EIB adopts climate roadmap, unveils €7.8bn financings
The European Investment Bank has approved the EIB Group Climate Bank Roadmap 2021-2025 that will guide future financing to support €1 trillion of climate action and environmental sustainability investments by 2030.
The roadmap details how the EIB and EIF will support green investments and align all financing activities with the principles and goals of the Paris climate agreement by the end of 2020.
The lender also announced a series of agreed fianncings worth €7.8 billion to support investment by business impacted by COVID-19, alongside backing clean transport, sustainable urban development, renewable energy, health and education investment across Europe and around the world.
This includes €400 million for the international COVAX initiative to ensure fair and equitable access to successful COVID-19 vaccines in Africa and scale up vaccine manufacturing in 92 developing and emerging economies alongside dedicated financing to help tourism companies impacted by the pandemic.
The lender also agreed €1.8 billion for medical research, new hospitals and public health investment and local lending schemes to strengthen private sector reliance to the economic shocks of COVID-19.
And the EIB approved more than €2.6 billon for new targeted business financing programs. This includes dedicated support for tourism companies hit by the COVID-19 crisis in France and a regional investment programme for growth companies in Bavaria.
Access to financing in Bulgaria, France, Germany, Romania and Spain will be enhanced by EIB support for new schemes managed by local financial and banking partners.
Direct EIB backing for corporate investment in electric vehicles, renewable energy and chemical innovation was also approved, alongside increased support for venture debt financing across Europe.
Sustainable urban transport in towns across Italy will be transformed by €300 million EIB backing for a new municipal clean transport financing scheme that will accelerate adoption of clean vehicles and reduce reliance on private cars.
Support for 145 electric buses and associated charging infrastructure in the Swedish city of Gothenburg was also approved. Rural communities in Cyprus and Ukraine will benefit from new EIB backed investment in local roads.
People living in cities across Poland, Germany, Austria, Ukraine and Mongolia will benefit from improved housing, better municipal services and upgraded urban transport under new sustainable urban investment and social housing financing approved by the EIB.
New initiatives will improve social services, urban transport and accelerate regeneration in the Polish cities of Poznan, Bialystok and Radom as well as across the Wielkopolska region. Energy efficiency, social housing and urban development will be supported in Düsseldorf and Innsbruck along with financing programmes to upgrade urban infrastructure in secondary cities across Mongolia.
Hospital patients, as well as university and school students, will benefit from new hospitals and improved health services, schools and university investment agreed by the EIB.
Healthcare, medical education and scientific research at the Medical University in Lublin in Poland will be transformed by EIB backed modernisation and expansion of specialist facilities. The EIB also agreed to support construction of a new hospital in the French city of Lens, and COVID-19 healthcare investment across the Netherlands.
And the EIB approved support for new windfarms in southern Italy, France and Portugal, expansion of district heating in Alkmaar and Dordrecht and increased use of geothermal energy to heat Dutch greenhouses.
