© Reuters. EIB assures that Ukraine forced the energy transition in an emergency
Quito, March 16 (.).- The vice president of the European Investment Bank (EIB), Ricardo Mourinho Félix, assured that Russia’s war in Ukraine has made the transition to a clean fossil fuel economy go from being a priority to an emergency.
During a three-day visit to Ecuador, Mourinho Félix told EFE that “the war in Ukraine has very clearly demonstrated the need for energy resilience, because today we live in a world with great volatility in energy prices. “.
“With the dependencies that have been demonstrated, what was a priority has become an emergency, so that countries can transition to a clean economy and not be pressured by high prices to forms of energy that are based on fuels fossils,” he said.
The executive of the European Union (EU) bank indicated that the institution’s roadmap is “not to finance any project that may have fossil energy.”
“We finance all the projects that want to move faster in this transition for an economy and clean modes of production and transportation,” he said.
In this sense, Mourinho Félix valued that the EIB registered in 2022 its financing record in countries outside the European Union (EU) with 10,800 million dollars.
“We look at the future with great will and ambition to continue financing clean energy projects such as solar energy in Peru, water and sanitation projects in Brazil, and financing projects for intermediaries to improve living conditions and support SMEs (small and medium-sized companies), he said.
The Portuguese economist detailed the importance of helping the business fabric to invest in “the two legs of the transition: the leg of the green transition and the digital transition”.
“Because all innovation is digitally based today, and it is important that there is a strong digitization so that innovation is easily incorporated to produce more and better, increase competitiveness and also achieve a green transition”, explained Mourinho Félix.
“Today the ways of working and negotiating, the functional economy, are much more digital than four years ago,” he added.
The vice-president of the EIB described his visit to Ecuador, the Latin American country with the highest per capita financing of the European organization, as “very positive”, accumulating 875 million dollars since 2006, which he hopes will be 1,000 million if a loan is finalized to finance the electrical interconnection between Ecuador and Peru.
In the Latin American region, Mourinho Félix recalled that the European financial institution has financed 14,000 million dollars since 1993 in 150 projects in 15 countries.
EFE
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