{"id":45379,"date":"2020-12-10T08:15:00","date_gmt":"2020-12-10T07:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/eu-unit\/?p=45379"},"modified":"2020-12-10T14:13:52","modified_gmt":"2020-12-10T13:13:52","slug":"ecbs-new-bond-purchasing-worth-e500-billion-exacerbates-the-climate-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/eu-unit\/issues\/climate-energy\/45379\/ecbs-new-bond-purchasing-worth-e500-billion-exacerbates-the-climate-crisis\/","title":{"rendered":"ECB\u2019s new bond purchasing worth \u20ac500 billion exacerbates the climate crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Frankfurt\/ Brussels<\/strong> – The European Central Bank (ECB) governing council approved <\/strong>new bond purchasing worth \u20ac500 billion. The bank\u2019s decision, while responding to the economic crisis triggered by the coronavirus pandemic, fails to respond to the climate crisis as it does not exclude fossil fuels and other carbon-intensive sectors from its asset purchases.<\/p>\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n

Greenpeace climate and energy campaigner Adam Pawloff <\/strong>said: <\/strong>\u201cThe ECB can\u2019t continue with ‘business as usual’ practices that fuel the climate crisis in an attempt to address the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic. Its current monetary policy contributes to cementing in the carbon-intensive structure of our economy for years to come and runs counter to the EU Green Deal and efforts to achieve climate neutrality. The ECB must align its policies with the Paris Climate Agreement, contributing to a green and just recovery, and as a first step it should exclude fossil fuels from its asset purchases<\/em>.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n

The ECB has announced asset purchases known as quantitative easing (QE) in two tranches up to a total of 1.35 trillion euros to date this year, in a programme known as the Pandemic Emergency Purchasing Programme (PEPP) and through the Asset Purchase Program (APP) with monthly purchases of 20 billion Euros and a total stock of 2.9 trillion Euros. The majority of bonds purchased are from governments, whilst some also come from corporations.<\/p>\n\n

Greenpeace, together with the New Economics Foundation and a number of universities recently launched a report<\/a> that shows how the ECB policy of \u2018market neutrality\u2019 actually skews the bank\u2019s corporate bond purchases in favor of carbon intensive industries.The ECB holds bonds from many of the EU\u2019s worst emitters, including Total, Shell, OMV and Eni. The analysis also indicates that 62.7% of the bonds held by the ECB come from carbon-intensive sectors that contribute only 17.8% to employment and 29.1% to gross value added in the Euro area.<\/p>\n\n

Greenpeace demands that the ECB exclude fossil fuel companies from all future asset purchases and that the ECB\u2019s monetary policy review due to be completed by mid 2021 leads to the inclusion of climate risk throughout ECB operations, whether it is by the exclusion of fossil fuels from collateral that banks are allowed to give the ECB when they borrow money, or by aligning its refinancing operations to the banking sector with the Paris Agreement.<\/p>\n\n

\u2013 ends \u2013<\/em><\/p>\n\n

Contacts<\/strong>:<\/p>\n\n

Adam Pawloff \u2013 Greenpeace climate and energy campaigner:<\/strong> +43 650 3722524, adam.pawloff@greenpeace.org<\/a><\/p>\n\n

Mihaela Bogelji\u0107 \u2013 Greenpeace communications: <\/strong>+385 92 2929 265, mihaela.bogeljic@greenpeace.org<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Frankfurt\/ Brussels – The European Central Bank (ECB) governing council today approved new bond purchasing worth \u20ac500 billion. The bank\u2019s decision, while responding to the economic crisis triggered by the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":3934,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"p4_og_title":"","p4_og_description":"","p4_og_image":"","p4_og_image_id":"","p4_seo_canonical_url":"","p4_campaign_name":"not set","p4_local_project":"not set","p4_basket_name":"not set","p4_department":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[22,29],"p4-page-type":[14],"class_list":["post-45379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-climate-energy","tag-climatechange","tag-fossilfuels","p4-page-type-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/eu-unit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/eu-unit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/eu-unit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/eu-unit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/eu-unit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45379"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/eu-unit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45379\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45381,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/eu-unit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45379\/revisions\/45381"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/eu-unit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/eu-unit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/eu-unit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/eu-unit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45379"},{"taxonomy":"p4-page-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/eu-unit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/p4-page-type?post=45379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}