Development banks in $6bn renewables financing spree

The world's largest multilateral development banks (MDB) invested a combined $6 billion in the renewable energy sector last year, according to a freshly released report.

Last year, the six development banks featured in the document committed a total of $25 billion to climate finance, comprising $20 billion for climate change mitigation and $5 billion for adaptation. Since 2011, MDBs have committed more than $131 billion in climate investments in developed and emerging markets.

The report was written by a group of MDBs including the African Development Bank, the Asian Development Bank the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the European Investment Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and the World Bank.

The two largest investors were the World Bank, which invested $10.7 billion, and EIB, with $5.1 billion.

Out of mitigation funding, which the report describes as actions “undertaken to lower the current and expected risks or vulnerabilities posed by climate change,” the development banks committed $6 billion to the sector, as well as $5.3 billion to transportation and $2.8 billion for energy efficiency. Non-EU Europe and Central Asia received 24 percent of investments at $5 billion, and South Asia was next at 4.7 billion.

Climate-adaptation projects, meanwhile, were defined as inititives promoting “efforts for the reduction, limitation, or sequestration of greenhouse gas emissions to reduce the risk of climate change”.

According to the Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment 2016 report, released by the United Nations in March, total investments in clean energy topped $286 billion. The world spent more money creating solar, wind and other renewables capacity – adding 118GW globally – than it invested in new coal, natural gas or nuclear generation.