UKRAINE: The strong financing arm of the European Union’s leadership has warned against retreating from climate goals in the face of the energy crisis. He has also hinted at a coordinated action plan from the world’s top development banks for the COP 27 conference and Ukraine.
The disruption of the energy market brought on by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to Werner Hoyer, president of the European Investment Bank, has been a setback for net zero emissions ambitions, but the way forward is still clear.
Hoyer said, “We have the alternative on the table, and that is an aggressive move towards renewables and an aggressive move towards energy efficiency, and we must not stop that now.”
Even if it may take some of the most impacted EU nations years to wean themselves off of Russian oil and gas, the necessity to also survive the upcoming winter will not cause the EIB to lift its recent restriction on loans for fossil fuels.
Hoyer acknowledged that the EIB’s annual investments of 65-80 billion euros ($64-79 billion) “would never be enough” to address the problems.
However, it also serves as chair of the 12-member Multilateral Development Bank Group, which includes organisations like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the major development banks in Asia and Africa, which together have enormous financial resources.
The IMF and World Bank meetings are in Washington in a week, then the COP 27 climate summit in Egypt in November—where Hoyer anticipates a collective approach—is the group’s next main priorities.
“I think the European Union must be active outside its borders, more and more visibly and credibly,” he said.
Hoyer cautioned that some sectors of the developing world did not embrace the Western narrative that Russia is to blame for the war and the associated spike in oil and food costs. Russia is still a stakeholder in some other large MDBs.
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