As World Leaders gather in New York this month for Climate Week, Werner Hoyer, European Investment Bank president, says, ‘It’s time to deliver’

World leaders gather in New York this month against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine and multiple, intertwined crises.

Russia’s unprovoked attack has brought unimaginable suffering to a peaceful, sovereign nation and caused severe disruption to global energy and food markets. Meanwhile, the resilience of the world’s infrastructure, electricity grids, agricultural crops and trade routes is severely tested by extreme droughts and devastating floods.

The bravery of the Ukrainian people sets an example of perseverance for all of us; the rest of the world population, especially the most vulnerable, will deal with the consequences of this war, through increased prices and economic uncertainty. In my meetings with leaders, the business community and civil society in New York, I will argue for a three-pronged response to the unfolding conundrum: Transform, Adapt, and Deliver.

Transform:

The quandary we are facing is a wakeup call for the last apologists for fossil fuels and a vindication of the decision by many organisations – including the European Investment Bank, which has been a front-runner - to stop financing an energy source in which autocrats like Russian President Vladimir Putin have a decisive say. This dependency, equally poisonous for our society and our planet, must end. Indeed, my main point at the Forsaken Futures event, organised by Project Syndicate, is that this war could prove a breakthrough moment, accelerating the transition to clean, affordable energy.

Over the last five years, out of the €62 billion that the European Investment Bank has invested in the energy sector, €56.7 billion – more than 90% – went to renewables, electricity grids, and especially energy efficiency. If Europe’s lights are still on despite Russia’s blackmail, it is thanks in part to these timely investments. We are now ready to do more, raise our ambition, and deploy the full scale of our financial resources in a flexible way to lead our advance towards decarbonisation.

Make no mistake, the challenge is daunting. The total decoupling from Russia and fossil fuels that we aim to achieve entails a radical transformation of the European energy system. But as we have done before — from the debt crisis to the COVID-19 pandemic – Europe will rise to the occasion, in a spirit of solidarity. We will not be held hostage to Putin’s whims.

Adapt:

The transformation is not just a matter of strategic autonomy. These past few months have highlighted the urgency of arresting the runaway heating of our planet. We saw Europe’s rivers dry up and disappear this summer, disrupting the flow of goods and energy production from hydro to nuclear.

Prolonged droughts across the globe have devastated crops from Europe to the Horn of Africa, the U.S. West Coast and China. Large swathes of Pakistan were inundated by torrential floods that brought misery to tens of millions.

All of this only confirms that some of the consequences of our past failures to protect climate and biodiversity are now unavoidable. As I will be telling participants at the World Biodiversity Summit and the New York Climate Week, we now have no choice but to adapt —at a much faster pace than we thought —to a planet that is becoming hotter and harsher.

That’s why the European Investment Bank will triple its global adaptation finance by 2025, to help Europe and developing nations prepare for what’s coming. Already today, we screen all the projects we finance, making sure they are fit to withstand extreme weather and a warming planet.

Deliver:

It’s not too late to act to avoid the worst. Solutions exist, and where they don’t, we must invent them and roll them out at scale.

While the world has gone a long way in deploying renewables – the Inflation Reduction Act in the U.S. and the RepowerEU Plan being the latest examples of policy commitment – we now need to go a step further. In addition to the low-hanging fruit of decarbonisation, such as electric vehicles, we should also direct substantially more investment towards hard-to-abate sectors, such as heavy industry, aviation and shipping.

The European Investment Bank has a strong track record in backing human ingenuity and innovation. We financed offshore wind farms when the technology was still in its infancy, and – more recently – the development of COVID-19 vaccines in record time, using a breakthrough technology.

We must now do the same again, dedicating additional resources to innovative technologies, such as green hydrogen, in sectors where no viable low-carbon alternatives exist at scale today. The European Investment Bank thus welcomes European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s proposals for measures that accelerate the development of green hydrogen.

The key driver of innovation is knowledge, and that will be my message at the UN Transforming Education Summit. Again, the European Investment Bank is one of the world’s largest lenders in the education sector, with long-standing experience to be proud of: from kindergartens to primary and secondary schools, up to tertiary education, training and research centres; we work to improve the capacity and quality of education systems in countries within the EU —like Spain, Sweden and Belgium — and outside, in places such as Ukraine, Morocco and Montenegro. In doing so, we contribute to providing people with adequate skills, including re-skilling where necessary, to respond to future needs and challenges, such as those to address climate change.   Together with our partners, we stand ready to address the lessons learned from the pandemic to succeed in transforming education.

In short, we will be on the frontlines of the battle for a more sustainable future.

Just as we were among the first to offer support to Ukraine in its hour of need, we will spearhead the world’s collective effort to address the challenges we are facing. Just as we introduced green bonds to global capital markets and backed mRNA vaccines, we will now finance solutions that will transform our economies. Just as we achieved record financing volumes to help Europe withstand and recover from the pandemic, we will do the same to emerge stronger from this storm.

This is a time to deliver, to put our money where our mouth is. And the European Investment Bank will do its part.