22 September 2014: Leaders from the climate finance community gathered at a forum hosted by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) and Finance for Resilience (FiRe) to accelerate sustainable energy finance by US$5 billion over a three-year period.

Held in advance of the UN Climate Summit on 22 September 2014, in New York, US, the ‘Building a Global Alliance of Sustainable Energy Financing Banks’ forum was proposed by EBRD at the BNEF Summit in April 2014 and chosen by FiRe, a private-sector platform, as a “FiRe Priority.” The event aimed to scale-up energy efficiency finance by: building a global alliance of banks engaged in energy efficiency and renewable energy financing; sharing best practices for the future deployment of sustainable energy finance; and confirming their intention to support the development of local banks as channels for sustainable energy finance.

Josué Tanaka, EBRD Managing Director for Energy Efficiency and Climate Change, underlined that local banks were key to aggregating and scaling-up sustainable energy finance, adding that the forum had identified important factors to expand local banks’ energy efficiency and renewable energy financing.

Michael Liebreich, Founder of FiRe, said he had “no doubt” that the forum was an opportunity for financiers and investors to adopt EBRD’s step-wise model for energy efficiency finance to “drive more money into energy efficiency around the world, enabling environmental improvement and accelerating economic development.”

The event drew leading private sector banks engaged in sustainable energy finance, including BNP Paribas, Erste Group, Garanti Bank and Kyrgyz Investment and Credit Bank, as well as multilateral development banks, climate finance institutions and government agencies involved in sustainable financing activities of local banks. [EBRD Press Release] [BNEF Summit]