The European Investment Bank (EIB) has said that it will stick to its target of investing around $100 billion in climate action over the next five years, the largest climate finance contribution of any single multilateral institution, and is already exceeding its own targets for climate finance.
EIB President, Werner Hoyer, made the disclosure while presenting the EIB Group annual results at a news conference in Brussels, Belgium, on Tuesday, January 24, 2017.
The contributions of financial institutions such as the EIB are crucial to enable countries to reach their central target under the Paris Climate Change Agreement, which is to keep the global average temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels.
The bank announced this week that it has overshot its overall climate finance target for the seventh year running, providing over 19 billion Euros. This represented about a quarter of the bank’s total lending in 2016.
In support of the Paris Agreement, the European Investment Bank has already committed to increase its lending for projects in developing countries to curb greenhouse gas emissions and to build resilience to climate change to 35% of total lending by 2020.
EIB funding supports sustainable projects in over 160 countries and acts as a catalyst to mobilise private finance for climate action, encouraging others to match their investment.
The EIB is self-financed: lending activities are mainly funded via bond issuance in the international capital markets. Despite periods of market uncertainty last year, the Bank successfully raised 66.4 billion euros from investors around the world. Ten years after pioneering the first Green Bonds, they remain the largest issuer, with over 15 billion euros raised for climate projects since 2007.
