The European Investment Bank (EIB) has allocated 36.5 billion euros, more than half of its total investment in 2022, to climate and environmental loans to promote the transition to clean energy and reduce dependence on fossil fuels from Russia and has announced that it will provide an additional $30 billion for high-impact energy projects over the next five years.
“We are fully on track to meet our goal of mobilizing €1 trillion for our planet in this decade,” said EIB President Werner Hoyer this Thursday during the presentation of the Group’s annual results in Brussels.
Total EIB Group investment in 2022 amounted to €72.5bn, which is expected to support around €260bn in investments and create up to 950,000 jobs by 2026, while almost half (46%) of the loans that has been awarded in the European Union (EU) was allocated to projects in cohesion regions.
Meanwhile, green financing from the EIB brought together 58% of the total invested last year, in line with the bank’s commitment to dedicate at least half of its resources to climate action and environmental sustainability.
“We kept our promises, we exceeded our objectives, we put our money where our mouth is,” Hoyer stressed, stressing that “the EU bank is deploying all its financial power to cushion the economic consequences of Putin’s unjustified aggression and lay the foundations for a sustainable recovery.”
In this regard, he recalled that the EIB offered immediate aid to Ukraine just after the outbreak of the war, disbursing 1.7 billion euros in funds to help finance emergency repairs to the country’s infrastructure, devastated by Russian bombing.
In addition to its support for Ukraine, EIB Global signed €9.1bn in new financing in 2022, bringing the EIB’s arm’s total operations for global partnerships launched a year ago to €10.8bn.
Hoyer also highlighted the EIB’s contribution to other challenges facing the EU, such as the Covid-19 pandemic, the energy crisis resulting from the war or the need to guarantee the competitiveness of the European market on an equal footing with its international partners.
“At a time when the United States is implementing the largest green subsidy program in history, it is imperative that Europe stay the course, both for the good of our planet and to safeguard the competitiveness of our economies,” Hoyer said earlier. to settle that the EIB “will do its part to finance the innovation that takes the EU to net zero”.