EIB announce €2bn clean energy funding boost

The European Investment Bank (EIB) announced on Tuesday that it will provide a new wave of €2 billion in funding for renewable energy and carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects.

The bank, the European Union's nonprofit long-term lending institution, recently completed the sale of 300 million emission allowances as part of the NER 300 scheme, which will help to fund the new investments.

NER 300 is one of the largest funding programmes for innovative smart technologies, which has helped it to raise new finances.

The EIB started to sell the first 200 million of the EU allowances covered by the NER 300 scheme in December 2011.

More than €1.5 billion was raised during the first phase of sales that ended in September 2012 with over €500 million raised during the second phase of sales.

Jonathan Taylor, the European Investment Bank Vice President, said: "The European Investment Bank is pleased to support future investment in low-carbon demonstration projects."

"Successful completion of monetisation of carbon allowances under the NER300 scheme will help both carbon capture and storage schemes and innovative renewable energy projects across Europe reach a commercial scale,” Taylor continued.
 
Jos Delbeke, Director General for Climate Action, European Commission, said: “The NER300 is a new path taken a few years ago to support large scale demonstration projects. We will need more of this type of innovation support in the transition to a low-carbon economy. I am glad that the European Investment Bank has joined us in this innovative work and I commend them for having done an excellent job in monetising allowances.”

The bank said that it had received 33 applications for project funding and announcements on successful applications will be made later this year.