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The European Union's investment arm said Thursday it will stop funding fossil fuel projects from 2022 as part of a new strategy aimed at fighting climate change, in a decision environmental campaigners hailed as a "significant victory".
The European Investment Bank, the world's largest multilateral lender, had been criticised by climate groups for funding gas projects that potentially threatened the EU's commitment to the Paris climate goals.
But despite gas proving a potential sticking point, the EIB's board of directors—composed of state representatives and the European Commission—approved the new energy policy on Thursday.
"We will stop financing fossil fuels, and we will launch the most ambitious climate investment strategy of any public financial institution anywhere," EIB President Werner Hoyer said in a statement.
The EIB said the new energy plan would also "unlock" one trillion euros ($1.1 trillion) of climate action and environmentally sustainable investment over the next decade.
[...] Nineteen EU member states including France and Germany voted for the new policy, according to Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
But three countries—Poland, Romania and Hungary—voted against, wanting more flexibility for gas funding, as did Estonia, Lithuania, Cyprus and Malta, which abstained.
Austria and Luxembourg also abstained, objecting to nuclear power being eligible for funding under the new policy, Greenpeace and the WWF said.
The European Commission said it supported the new policy, and it voted in favour.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Monday November 18 2019, @04:24AM (1 child)
Those "clingers" don't exist for starters. It makes no sense to discuss this matter without considering that fossil fuels are used for many of the activities that make our societies work, like agriculture, transportation, electricity production, a huge portion of chemistry, etc.
No irony here. There's been a long, pathetic progression towards less effective technologies and ineffective and often destructive environmental strategies. For example, toilets that don't flush and laundry machines that don't clean, electricity and food that is much more expensive and less reliable, technology development projects that just shuffle tax payer funds to the right cronies, international treaties that are simultaneously too small and too destructive to parties with actual compliance requirements, and of course, it comes at the expense of the serious problems of the world like poverty, overpopulation, habitat destruction, reducing corruption, and so on.
The positive nature of the car was easy to see. The positive nature of climate change rituals that don't even help are nonexistent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 18 2019, @08:35AM
Thought you said you were going to get "on it", khallow! All you got is whining about your "no-flush" toilet? I have a solution for you: Leafblower! Gasoline powered if you must, but even electric, channeling all that California Nuke energy right behind your "bidness" and blowing it right on down to the fossil fueled waste water treatment plant! Take a dump for Exxon!