The EIB is the EU’s investment giant, channeling billions every year into everything from local buses to cross-border energy infrastructure. In transport, this giant has been wide awake in several areas, investing heavily in road and rail electrification and in clean urban mobility. But in others, it has been looking the other way or not using its potential at all.

Under the current 2020-2025 Climate Bank Roadmap (CBR1), the EIB committed to become the “EU Climate Bank”. This meant aligning all its operations with the EU’s climate goals, phasing out most fossil fuel lending and surpassing the threshold of 50% green lending.

These were important steps. Yet, as a recent T&E assessment showed, gaps remain: the bank still supports companies with large fossil fuel portfolios and continues to back road expansion, plug-in hybrids, LNG, e-fuels for road transport and biofuels. At times, it even undermined its own commitments, most notably with a massive €800 million loan to Spanish airport operator AENA – making no secret of its plans to expand airports across Spain – despite the clear prohibition on airport expansion financing.

In October, the EIB adopted the next phase of its roadmap (CBR2) for 2026-2030. Unfortunately, it keeps the green lending target at 50%, a level the bank already meets and exceeds. The main advancement is the extension of CBR rules to all EIB Group entities, but this cannot compensate for the missed opportunity to raise the bank’s climate ambition. Still, the continuity of the roadmap provides a renewed mandate to fully mobilise EIB financing for the decarbonisation of all transport modes. This should mean backing Made-in-Europe clean technologies, prioritising de-risking instruments, and deepening support for clean and equitable public transport.

Now that CBR2 is out, it is crucial for the EIB to review its Transport Lending Policy, last updated in 2022. Since then the EU has adopted a much clearer technological approach to electrifying road transport and adopting alternative fuels for aviation and shipping. The lending policy must reflect that and correct the blind spots of the past five years.

So, where should the giant focus next? Three investment frontiers stand out:

Clean fuels for aviation and shipping

Aviation and shipping remain among the hardest sectors to decarbonise. While the EIB has invested in infrastructure, it has barely touched the fuels themselves. Yet these sectors urgently need scalable clean alternatives, particularly e-fuels. The EU has now a strong regulatory framework for sustainable fuels, and the recent Sustainable Transport Investment Plan (STIP) explicitly calls on mobilising €2 billion via InvestEU – a programme largely implemented by the EIB. The bank should treat STIP as a clear call to action and help jump-start a domestic e-fuels industry by 2030.

The EIB already has a strong toolbox of financial instruments to support clean shipping and marine fuels, positioning it as a natural anchor investor to complement and scale up new EU-level instruments under development.

Battery value chains

Strengthening a homegrown battery value chain is vital for the EU’s competitiveness and the development of a clean energy and transport network. But despite €3.9 billion in EIB support since 2021, most financing has gone to downstream cell manufacturing. The midstream – cathodes, precursors, processed materials, and the recovery stages of recycling – remains largely neglected, even though it is crucial for Europe’s strategic autonomy. The EU Battery Booster strategy from last December emphasises that public banks must de-risk investments across the value chain until the business case stabilises. The EIB should now pivot to mid- and upstream production, where market failures are most acute.

Transport poverty

The transition to clean transport will only succeed if it works for everyone, especially for households that cannot afford higher upfront costs for cleaner mobility options. The EU has recognised this challenge through the creation of the Social Climate Fund (SCF), financed by revenues from extending carbon pricing to road transport under ETS2.

In this context, the EIB’s progress towards setting up an ETS2 Frontloading Facility is a highly welcome and timely development. By anticipating future ETS2 revenues, it would allow Member States to invest early in measures that reduce transport poverty and support decarbonisation well before the carbon price takes effect in 2028. Examples could include the EIB supporting national social leasing schemes to make EVs more affordable, improving public transport capacity, and loans to mobility-on-demand and shared-mobility services. This is exactly the kind of targeted, policy-aligned intervention where the EIB can play a decisive role in making the EU’s climate transition fair, credible and effective, while strengthening public acceptance of ETS2.

The EIB’s renewed Climate Bank Roadmap is a welcome reaffirmation of its climate commitments for the next five years. Europe urgently needs the EIB to deploy its financial firepower to strengthen competitiveness and accelerate decarbonisation. The challenge now is delivery. To live up to this mandate, the bank must now be bolder in supporting critical clean transport technologies. The plans to frontload future carbon revenues from transport to accelerate the tackling of transport poverty are encouraging first steps. This is the direction of travel Europe needs: faster, more targeted, and firmly aligned with its climate goals.