company:european investment bank

EU bank courts controversy with €1.5bn gas pipe investment
▻https://euobserver.com/energy/140926

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he European Investment Bank (EIB) decided this week to invest €1.5bn in a natural gas pipeline connecting Italy, Greece, and Albania – despite MEPs having requested a vote on such preferential treatment given to fossil-fuel gas projects.

The bank’s decision has been heavily criticised by environmental groups, who said it was “one of Europe’s largest ever loans to one of the EU’s largest fossil fuel projects”.

Among the concerns is that the project will increase greenhouse gas emissions, and that the use of gas will be prolonged beyond what some scientists say is the final gas phase-out deadline if Europe is to keep up to its Paris treaty promises.

The project is called the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), and it is part of a larger concept, the Southern Gas Corridor.

The latest would transport natural gas from Azerbaijan, through Turkey, to Europe. The TAP would be the last leg of the gas route.

#énergi #gaz #balkans #adriatique #tube #guerre_des-tubes #russie #gazoducs

Gas pipelines run over EU energy policy
▻http://us6.campaign-archive1.com/?u=6e13c74c17ec527c4be72d64f&id=3e34587e68&e=08052803c8

Gas pipelines run over
EU energy policy

Critics claim €3bn European funding for the Southern Gas Corridor energy project would undermine EU climate change targets and gloss over human rights abuses.

By Terry Macalister

LONDON, 14 September, 2016 – Civil society campaigners have accused the European Union of pouring unprecedented amounts of state aid into a huge energy project that runs counter to its own climate change objectives.

Critics say funding the construction of new gas pipelines from the Caspian region is also causing misery to communities living along the 3,500 kilometre route, while helping to prop up an autocratic regime in Azerbaijan.

The concerns about the Southern Gas Corridor project come amid expectations that the European Investment Bank (EIB), which is owned by European Union member states, is about to provide the scheme with up €3 billion – its biggest ever lump sum.

#gaz #guerre_du_gaz #europe #russie

Ocean Power Backed by EIB Loan Moves Closer to ‘Bankability’ - Bloomberg
▻http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-07/ocean-power-backed-by-eib-loan-moves-closer-to-bankability

The two-century old dream of harnessing the power of the sea came closer to commercial reality after the European Investment Bank backed a Finnish company with ambitions to deploy machines that generate electricity in six countries.

AW-Energy Oy, which also has the support of the nation’s biggest utility, Fortum Oyj, said it expects its could sell as many as 300 megawatts of its WaveRollers in the coming years. The EIB on Wednesday invested 10 million euros ($11 million) in the company to spur the commercialization of the technology.

Power generated from ocean waves has captured scientific attention since at least 1799, when the first patents were filed in France. While scores of demonstration projects have tried harnessing the sea’s energy, the technology hasn’t yet caught on at a utility scale because of its expense and technical difficulty. AW-Energy says its machine using a hinged panel fixed to the seabed is ready for widespread use.

“The tech is commercially mature,” Chief Executive Officer John Liljelund said in a phone interview from Brussels, adding that the machine is due to receive a safety certificate from Lloyd’s Register this month, increasing its “bankability.”

If it works at a big scale, wave power would generate huge amounts of electricity without producing greenhouse gases. In 2012, researchers at the German utility EON SE estimated 2.1 terawatts of could be captured along global coastlines.

Refugees don’t need our tears. They need us to stop making them refugees | Anders Lustgarten | Comment is free | The Guardian
▻http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/17/refugees-eu-policy-migrants-how-many-deaths

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In all the rage about #migration, one thing is never discussed: what we do to cause it. A report published this week by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists [ _voir ▻http://seenthis.net/messages/361855_ ] reveals that the World Bank displaced a staggering 3.4 million people in the last five years. By funding privatisations, land grabs and dams, by backing companies and governments accused of rape, murder and torture, and by putting $50bn into projects graded highest risk for “irreversible and unprecedented” social impacts, the World Bank has massively contributed to the flow of impoverished people across the globe. The single biggest thing we could do to stop migration is to abolish the development mafia: the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, European Investment Bank and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

A very close second is to stop bombing the Middle East. The west destroyed the infrastructure of Libya without any clue as to what would replace it. What has is a vacuum state run by warlords that is now the centre of Mediterranean people-smuggling. We’re right behind the Sisi regime in Egypt that is eradicating the Arab spring, cracking down on Muslims and privatising infrastructure at a rate of knots, all of which pushes huge numbers of people on to the boats. Our past work in Somalia, Syria and Iraq means those nationalities are top of the migrant list.

Not all migration is caused by the west, of course. But let’s have a real conversation about the part that is. Let’s have a real conversation about our ageing demographic and the massive skills shortage here, what it means for overstretched public services if we let migrants in (we’d need to raise money to meet increased demand, and the clearest and fairest way is a rise in taxes on the rich), the ethics of taking the cream of the crop from poor countries. Migration is a complex subject. But let’s not be cowards and pretend the migrants will stop coming. Because they won’t. This will never stop.

Does the EU think 40 Egyptian lives are worth less than one Ukrainian life?▻http://platformlondon.org/2014/02/20/does-the-eu-consider-than-40-egyptian-lives-are-worth-less-than-one-

Western governments threatened sanctions and the President of the European Investment Bank (EIB), Werner Hoyer, announced a halt to activities in Ukraine, “I think it would be completely the wrong signal to appear as being the ones who do business as usual in Ukraine while the people on the streets of Kiev, by whom and whyever, are being slaughtered.” The sentiment seem solid – the state crackdown in Ukraine has escalated horribly.

Yet it’s tempting to wonder how much EU geopolitical interests contributed to the rapid decision-making, rather than just the violence in the streets.

Not least given that EIB President Hoyer has no problem conducting “business as usual” in Egypt, where over 1,300 have been slaughtered – “by whom and whyever” – since July. Close to 1,000 were killed on a single day in August. Since then, there have been repeated massacres by state forces. On the third anniversary of the revolution, police attacked those marking the anniversary, killing at least 64 and hounding protestors through the streets. The jails are full with thousands of prisoners, with intense torture becoming routine. The “virginity tests” used to abuse women revolutionaries in 2011 have begun again. Political party members were arrested for displaying “No” signs prior to the constitutional referendum, and schoolchildren imprisoned for making handsigns or carrying the wrong ruler.

What is the EIB’s response to this? Rather than freeze lending, the bank made loans worth €392 million to the Egyptian power, air traffic and banking sector, just since December.

#Egypte #Ukraine #UE #deux_poids_deux_mesures

A peine née, sans même avoir le moindre bilan à présenter, la banque publique européenne se distingue déjà par son comportement prédateur et son insoumission.

BRUSSELS - Last week an internal document was made public which revealed that the European Investment Bank (EIB) is seeking an exemption on the Financial Transaction Tax (FTT).

After speaking out against US legislation regulating over-the-counter financial derivatives trading last year, it is the second time the EIB advocates the need to be exempt from much-needed financial regulation. The incident tells us several things about the business model of the ‘EU house bank’ and raises many questions about its added value which should lie in boosting the real economy and satisfying long term finance needs in line with EU objectives.

▻http://euobserver.com/opinion/120309