Sommaire: 11 December 2008, Poznan, Poland - Speech by EU Commissioner Stavros Dimas, Member of the European Commission, responsible for environment, "Global Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Fund (GEEREF) - an innovative platform to fight climate change and global poverty," at the Climate change and development: a key role for the global climate change alliance (side event)
Ladies and gentlemen,
It is a pleasure to welcome you to this side event on the Global Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Fund, or GEEREF. Thank you for making the time to join us.
Climate change is already making its impacts felt around the world and all the 'business as usual' scenarios point to it reaching dangerous levels during the course of this century. Poor developing countries, coastal regions and small island states are among those that will be hit hardest.
At the same time, some 1.6 billion people in developing countries still have no regular access to reliable energy services. Their prospects of breaking out of poverty will remain severely limited as long as this situation continues.
We can address both of these pressing challenges simultaneously by providing sustainable energy solutions that will not add to global warming. That is why the European Commission has developed the GEEREF.
The GEEREF is an innovative risk capital fund that will use limited public money to mobilise private investment in energy efficiency and renewable energy projects, in developing countries and economies in transition.
It amounts to a financial platform to fight both climate change and global poverty. As such, it embodies the EU's vision for the global and comprehensive climate agreement we must conclude in Copenhagen a year from now. We want the future agreement to establish global cooperation to achieve low-carbon sustainable development that delivers on the Millennium Development Goals. This is the vision the EU will be pressing for in the ministerial round table this afternoon.
This time last year in Bali I announced that the GEEREF was being set up. Today I am pleased to be able to tell you that the fund is now fully operational and that its first investment decisions have just been taken. I will return to these in a moment.
The International Energy Agency's World Energy Outlook 2008 has underlined more clearly than ever that current energy trends are patently unsustainable - not only in environmental terms but economically and socially too. The IEA warns that a major de-carbonisation of the world's energy system is needed. But the reality we see is that investment in energy efficiency and renewable energy around the world is not progressing nearly fast enough.
One major problem is that such projects face significant difficulties in raising commercial funding. This is largely because of a lack of risk capital. A second issue is the scale of the projects. Small projects in distant countries can have higher administrative and transaction costs. Consequently international financial institutions tend not to provide equity finance for them.
The GEEREF is intended to help fill these gaps. It is a public-private partnership that will invest primarily in renewable energy and sustainable energy infrastructure funds and similar investment structures that are tailored to regional needs and conditions. With other partners, the GEEREF will also co-invest in specific projects.
The focus will be mainly on investments below €10 million as these are mostly ignored by private investors and international finance institutions. We envisage that the GEEREF will invest in regional sub-funds for Africa, the Caribbean and Pacific, North Africa, Eastern Europe outside the EU, Latin America and Asia.
The European Commission is putting €80 million into the GEEREF between now and 2010, and with additional pledges from the German and Norwegian governments the fund's capital now stands at €110 million. We expect this sum to mobilise additional risk capital from the private sector of at least €300 million.
Our aim is to attract private investors by using public money to protect them against investment risks. The GEEREF will not make loans or grants but will invest its funds with the aim of making sustainable profits for its investors.
Last week the GEEREF Investment Committee gave preliminary approval to a first set of investments totalling €22 million. The money will go into two commercial renewable energy investment funds. One fund focuses on projects in sub-Saharan and southern Africa and the other in Asia, with a primary focus on India.
Both funds will invest equity in renewable energy projects such as wind energy generation, small hydro-electric generation, biomass and methane recovery.
Ladies and gentlemen,
I would like to end by thanking the German and Norwegian governments for their financial contributions to the GEEREF, the European Investment Bank and the European Investment Fund for helping to get it off the ground, and the European Parliament for its strong support.
As a global fund, GEEREF is open to investors from anywhere in the world. I hope that many more will join us.
These investments will promote innovation, foster economic growth, create jobs and help to bring secure and clean energy supplies to people who are deprived of them today. In the current economic climate these benefits are more valuable than ever, in developed countries and the developing world alike.
Thank you.
| Haut |
Etats Membres de l'Union Européenne
Alertes par e-mail
Envoyer par e-mail
Imprimer cette page