The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF), and the Finance for Resilience (FiRe) initiative hosted the “Building a Global Alliance of Sustainable Energy Financing Banks” forum today, which brought together leaders in the climate finance community to:

• build a global alliance of banks engaged in energy efficiency and renewable energy financing
• share best practices for the future deployment of sustainable energy finance, and
• confirm their intention to support the development of local banks as channels for sustainable energy finance.

This forum supports the winning proposal that was developed by the EBRD, and selected by the Finance for Resilience initiative as a “FiRe Priority” earlier this year, and aims to accelerate the scale-up of energy efficiency financing by US$ 5 billion over a three-year period. FiRe is a private sector-led platform that identifies and helps implement powerful ideas to raise finance for clean energy, climate and green growth solutions.

“The EBRD has a proven model to finance step-change improvements in energy efficiency. Their initiative, to share this knowledge globally, has made great progress since becoming a FiRe winner at the BNEF Summit in April. I have no doubt that this group of financiers and investors, getting together for the first time today, will drive more money into energy efficiency around the world, enabling environmental improvement and accelerating economic development,” said Michael Liebreich, Founder of FiRe.

“Local banks are key agents to finance a large number of energy efficiency and renewable energy projects within their respective countries of operations. Their client network, financial skills and coverage provide a strong base to aggregate and scale-up sustainable energy financing,” said Josué Tanaka, the EBRD’s Managing Director for Energy Efficiency and Climate Change. “Building on the experience of participants, their activity and results to date, the forum today identified key factors to drive the expansion of local banks’ energy efficiency and renewable energy financing around the world,” he concluded.

The private sector is crucial to achieve the scale-up required to address climate change challenges, and commercial banks are critical for financing the related investments. Participants at this forum, held in advance of the UN Climate Summit on 23 September, included leading private sector banks which are already engaged in sustainable energy financing, such as BNP Paribas, Erste Group, Garanti Bank and Kyrgyz Investment and Credit Bank. Multilateral development banks, climate finance institutions and government agencies contributing to the sustainable financing activities of local banks also shared their perspective.

The EBRD, owned by 64 countries and two intergovernmental institutions, is supporting the development of market economies and democracies. Follow us on the web, Facebook and Twitter. The Bank has financed sustainable energy projects in 34 of the 35countries where it works: Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Egypt, Estonia, FYR Macedonia, Georgia, Hungary, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Kyrgyz Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Tajikistan, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.

Launched in October 2013, Finance for Resilience (or ‘FiRe’) is an open and action-oriented platform that brings together leading clean energy experts to characterise and implement solutions to close the finance gap in the sector. Investment in clean energy fell for the second consecutive year, with the US$ 254 billion total in 2013 substantially lower than the level required to address climate change. The Finance for Resilience platform will address this problem by identifying and developing the best ideas for new clean energy investment. The platform targets ideas at the US$1 billion-plus per year scale. FiRe is supported by Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) provides unique analysis, tools and data for decision-makers driving change in the energy system. With unrivalled depth and breadth, we help clients stay on top of developments across the energy spectrum from our comprehensive web-based platform. BNEF has 200 staff based in London, New York, Beijing, Cape Town, Hong Kong, Munich, New Delhi, San Francisco, São Paulo, Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo, Washington D.C., and Zurich.

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