The European Union was criticized for making 5 billion euros ($6.7 billion) of fossil-fuel loans through its financial arm, while pushing for a carbon-dioxide emission-cutting policy across the 27-member bloc. The European Investment Bank, which loaned a record 19 billion euros to climate-related projects last year, increased its lending for fossil fuels such as coal to 5 billion euros in 2010 from 2.8 billion euros in 2007, according to a statement today from CEE Bankwatch Network, a Prague-based organization that monitors international finance institutions. The group called on the bank to halt loans to coal plants immediately and to phase out lending for other fossil fuels or risk locking countries, particularly new EU member-states, into a “fossil-fuel dependent path” for decades. The EU hopes to reduce greenhouse gases 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, pushing for the cuts at climate talks this week in South Africa. Fossil fuels accounted for most of the EIB’s energy loans, or 16 billion euros, in the four-year period studied by Bankwatch while new renewables received 13 billion euros of lending in that time, according to the statement.
