How “just” is the “just transition”? A regional analysis of climate finance in the European Union

Since re-branding itself as the world’s first climate bank, the European Investment Bank (EIB) was nominated by the European Commission to help implement its bold European Green Deal (EGD) by mobilising €1 trillion over a decade for sustainable investment towards transition from 2021. As a policy-taker, the EIB supports EGD objectives, including, ensuring the transition is “just” — defined as not leaving people and places behind. However, cities and urban areas, associated with their greater contributions to climate change, may be better placed to obtain demand-based climate finance than their less urbanised counterparts — potentially posing a challenge to a just transition. We conduct a regional analysis of EIB climate finance, confirming a trend whereby early-adopter larger cities are more likely to obtain climate finance per inhabitant than their counterparts, which may present a challenge to policy efforts to ensure the transition leaves no-one behind.