At the European Forum Alpbach, the EIB took the lead in two sessions: EIB Vice President Molterer gave a presentation in the symposium “Who will finance the economy: banks, capital markets or…?” and the EIB Institute sponsored a breakout session on “Climate and energy – key questions for the future”.

VP Molterer made the point that in a post-crisis world where bank credit is constrained and equity finance remains expensive, there will be an on-going need to attract long-term funds from institutional investors for infrastructure projects. Here, there is a clear role for a public bank such as the EIB to provide the structure or credit enhancement that will bring the projects and the investors together.

The breakout session on Climate and Energy, sponsored by the EIB Institute and arranged by the Bank’s Economics Departmen, kicked off a lively discussion of the key challenges of increasing access to energy, a major concern for developing countries, while at the same time remaining below the threshold of a two degree increase in aggregate global warming. Peter Wehrheim of DGCLIMA reviewed EU policy and progress towards the EU targets, Angus McCrone gave Bloomberg’s view of the recent developments in green energy markets and Amal-Lee Amin from International Climate Finance brought the developing country perspective. Turning to the financial solutions, Sean Kidney outlined the Climate Bonds Initiative, Donald McDonald described the actions of institutional investors to promote climate mitigation, and Chris Knowles brought the EIB perspective.