The funding over five years is double bank's investments in past decade in renewable energy and other projects
OSLO, Sept 30 (Reuters) - The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) plans to raise financing for green projects to 18 billion euros ($20.17 billion) in the next five years to help fight climate change, doubling rates in the past decade, it said on Wednesday.
"The international community has a unique chance this year to deliver a decisive set of measures to combat climate change," EBRD President Suma Chakrabarti said in a statement on Wednesday, referring to a U.N. summit in December in Paris.
Since 2006, the bank said it had invested more than 18 billion euros in more than 1,000 sustainable energy and other green projects with a total value of 97 billion euros.
"The Bank is aiming for green financing to total some 18 billion euros over the next five years. In other words, the EBRD would deliver as much green financing in the next five years as it has in the last ten," it said.
It said that its investments, ranging from solar plants in Jordan to wind farms in Mongolia, have led to a reduction of carbon emissions of more than 72 million tonnes a year.
Set up by governments in 1991 to support the ex-communist states of eastern Europe, the EBRD has expanded its mandate in recent years to parts of North Africa and central Asia.
($1 = 0.8924 euros) (Reporting by Alister Doyle; Editing by Catherine Evans)
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