14 DAY TRIAL // Only yesterday, it became public news that the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development had no intention to stop financing development in both the fossil fuels and the nuclear every sectors. Environmentalists displeased with these plans are now asking that the Bank rethink its investments agenda.
Specifically, Green 10, i.e. a coalition of ten green groups including the World Wildlife Fund and the European Environmental Bureau, demands that the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development agrees to quit funding dirty and risky energy projects.
The environmentalists explain that the Bank should start by pulling the plug on coal financing, and later on move on to no longer supporting nuclear energy and shale gas either, Business Green details.
“It is time for the EBRD [European Bank for Reconstruction and Development] to finally say goodbye to old-fashioned coal and say ‘no more’ – once and for all,” said Tony Long of the World Wildlife Fund's European Policy Office.
Together with other environmentalists, Tony Long maintains that this bank should follow in the footsteps of the World Bank and the European Investment Bank, both of whom have decided to no longer financially support energy projects that are bound to harm the environment.
As Tony Long put it, “The EBRD must join the growing movement in international development finance led by the World Bank and the European Investment Bank in ending funding for coal projects given their disastrous impacts on climate and health.”
The environmentalists suggest that, rather than investing in fossil fuels and other energy sources that have the potential to up environmental pollution levels, the Bank should start backing up green energy projects.
More so given the fact that, as a recent UN report shows, scientists are now 95% sure that human-caused environmental pollution needs be blamed for both global warming and climate change.
“Clearly the way forward is with renewable energy sources,” Tony Long stressed.