An ecological offer of the banks of Germany and Austria
In the face of decreasing outlays on environmental protection in Poland for the last two years and the costs of adaptation processes to European Union standards estimated in various government documents, possible solutions are being sought to stimulate investment activity in this area. Great hopes are pinned on the banking sector, which in the last few years has participated in the financing of total environmental protection expenditures in Poland at a level of approximately 14% per year. Among the banks offering loans for environmental protection purposes, Bank Ochrony Środowiska SA, which has the obligation to finance environmental protection investments enshrined in its statutes, definitely stands out. Loans are granted both from the bank’s own resources and from the resources of institutions that cooperate with it on an ongoing basis, primarily the national and provincial environmental protection funds. Bank Ochrony Środowiska SA is no exception in granting preferential loans using the financial resources of third-party institutions. Similar solutions have been operating successfully in Western European countries for many years. Examples include banks such as the German Deutsche Ausgleichbank or Kreditanstalt für Wiederaubau and the Austrian Kommunalkredit AG bank. Deutsche Ausgleichbank is a German public sector institution owned by the Federal Republic of Germany. In its lending activities, it favours investments by the corporate sector for the protection of water, air, land, as well as for energy efficiency and the use of renewable energy sources. The primary objective of the bank’s preferential programmes is to promote an environmentally-friendly management style among enterprises, both through the implementation of modern, environmentally-friendly technologies and modern accounting methods. The bank’s overarching objective is integrated, preventive environmental protection, i.e. measures aimed at promoting the avoidance or at least reduction of the negative environmental impact of the production process itself and energy saving. The bank also subsidises projects in the border regions of the countries neighbouring Germany.
