While the decision was eagerly awaited, the Board of Directors of the European Investment Bank (EIB) did not finally vote on Tuesday 15 October on the Bank's new draft energy lending policy, preferring to continue discussions at its next meeting on 14 November, "with a view to obtaining final approval".
"I am pleased with the significant progress made today and I am increasingly confident that we will achieve final approval in November", said Andrew McDowell, EIB Vice-President responsible for energy.
The NGO Counter Balance, on the other hand, regretted this postponement. In its opinion, this new deadline is mainly due to the tensions created by the EIB's proposal between the 29 Directors (appointed by each of the 28 Member States and the European Commission respectively).
The EIB's project is of particular importance, as it includes, notably, the phasing out of the Bank's support for fossil fuel projects by the end of 2020.
According to Counter Balance and other NGOs, the European Commission and several EIB shareholders, including Germany, are seeking to curb the bank's climate ambitions, in particular by maintaining the financing of gas projects after 2020.
This statement was neither clearly denied nor confirmed by the Commission. Asked about this on Monday 14 October, Annika Breidthardt, one of the institution's spokespersons, remained very vague, simply stating that the Commission "supports the EIB's ambition to become the EU's climate bank".
A revision of the project criticised. In a recent letter to the EIB, some 70 NGOs, including Counter Balance, had also complained that, under pressure from the gas industry and the Commission, the bank's initial draft presented on 26 July had been significantly weakened in terms of climate ambition (see EUROPE 12343/12).
More specifically, these NGOs consider that, unlike the first version of the project, the version dated September 26 could allow gas projects to remain eligible for funding or to be approved quickly, before a potential policy excluding all fossil fuels, including gas, comes into effect.
This criticism had also been raised by some MEPs, such as Aurore Lalucq (S&D, France), during a recent debate on the greening of the EIB in the European Parliament (see EUROPE 12346/12).
Following an analysis of both versions, it appears that, apart from minor changes consisting of reformulated sentences or clarifications, the main purpose of the changes made to the text seems to be to avoid excluding all gas projects from EIB financing.
A new paragraph states in particular that it is "important to stress at the outset that the bank is aware of the necessary role that gas will continue to play to decarbonise energy systems", and that "natural gas will be progressively replaced by low-carbon gases such as biogas, synthetic gas and hydrogen".
In addition, while it was initially written that "all the Bank's activities in the energy sector will be fully aligned with the Paris Agreement", this sentence has been deleted in the revised version.
Instead, the text now states that, in order to manage the significant change that the phase-out of fossil fuels represents for the bank, it will "continue to approve projects already under appraisal [...] until the end of 2020". And furthermore: "During this period, the Bank will support gas infrastructure projects on the 4th list of projects of common interest co-financed by the EU budget".
See the initial (https://bit.ly/2K2y2lp ) and revised (https://bit.ly/2OPnGrO ) versions of the draft EIB Energy Lending Policy. (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)