Ambroise Fayolle, vice-president of the European Investment Bank (EIB), spoke at the high-level COP29 event, “Driving Transformative Climate Action: Shifting the Focus from Financial Inputs to Impact and MDBs' Catalytic Effect.”
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Your Excellencies, Dear Colleagues,
President Calviño cannot be here today with us. She passes on her regards and best wishes for a constructive and fruitful discussion around the table today. It is my honour to represent her.
The EIB has been active in the MDB Climate Working Groups since 2010, and we currently chair the MDB Climate Reporting Group. The EIB team has coordinated and published the joint MDB Climate Finance Reports for 2021, 2022, and 2023. I thank all the MDBs’ climate experts that work hard to deliver our flagship annual report.
MDBs have used harmonised methodologies for their climate finance since their first report in 2012, and they continue to improve, working closely with IDFC, the International Development Finance Club. To improve transparency, we moved five years ago to report across all countries of operation, providing data split by country income level. Other important datasets include least developed countries and Small Island Developing States. 2023’s record figures reached over $74 billion for low- and middle-income countries with $125 billion worldwide.
Climate reporting is of course wider than climate finance and MDBs are also looking at how to report on all six building blocks of our COP24 Paris Alignment Framework. One important aspect is how MDBs can assess and report on the climate impacts of all their finance, both positive and negative. So, our climate reporting in the future can build on that joint MDB work published yesterday.
The European Investment Bank Group is the financial arm of the European Union and one of the world's largest multilateral development banks. We led the way by cutting financing for fossil fuel power and by stepping up investment into green industries and climate adaptation. We have also been a climate bank for a long time. We issued the world’s first green bond – the Climate Awareness Bond - in 2007 – now at €100 billion and counting. In 2023, we also achieved record green finance, amounting to nearly €50 billion, representing over 50% of our total lending, the great majority of it being climate finance.
We are striving to enhance impact alongside volume by innovating and broadening our available solutions. Allow me to share a few examples:
In Barbados, we have finalised our first debt-for-climate resilience conversion in partnership with the Interamerican Development Bank and the Green Climate Fund. This investment will enable significant upfront savings ($130 million) for the Barbadian government, allowing it to address ongoing droughts and water scarcity through the creation of a climate resilient wastewater treatment facility. Additionally, we are proud to include EIB’s first Climate Resilient Debt Clause in this transaction, which gives the governments breathing space, deferring loan repayments when disaster strikes.
Financing climate adaptation is a key priority for the EIB Group. In Europe, the EIB is supporting countries affected by recent extreme weather events – in Central and Eastern Europe and Spain.
These devastating floods show the urgency of investing in adaptation and resilience and that the effects of climate change are being felt in every corner of the world. To accelerate climate adaptation finance, we are enhancing our advisory services to improve access to and usage of climate risk-related data, enabling better climate adaptation investment decisions.
Alongside our partners at the European Commission and the Caribbean Development Bank, we recently approved a €100 million financing package to support 14 Caribbean Countries with wastewater, adaptation and ocean protection projects.
To mobilise climate finance at scale, the EIB Group has teamed up with the European Commission and partners to set up the Global Green Bond Initiative (GGBI). It will do so notably by providing technical assistance to green bond issuers in emerging markets and developing economies, and by crowding in private investors through a dedicated de-risked fund, which will act as an anchor investor in green bonds issued. The fund's anticipated impact could spur green investments totalling up to EUR 15-20 billion.
In addition, the EIB Group is proud to lead the GEMs, the Global Emerging Markets Risk Database, which aggregates and publishes MDBs' risk-related data to encourage private sector investments in emerging markets and developing economies.
Colleagues, the EIB Group is deeply committed to increasing its support for a just and clean energy transition, not just in Europe, but around the world. We are the climate bank, and you can count on us.