EIB Senior Climate Advisor Birgitte Keulen helps forge sustainability

Imagine working in a role that focuses on sustainable transport and building greener infrastructure. Sound purposeful?

Meet Birgitte Keulen. She's a Senior Climate Advisor in the European Investment Bank (EIB) Group's Mobility Department, and her role sees her focusing on the deployment of cleaner transport vehicles and their associated infrastructure needs.

A strong focus on bulding sustainable environments

Birgitte has been in the EIB Group's Projects/Mobility department since 2015, and has been coordinating the work within the Mobility Department in the Bank's journey to become the EU Climate Bank since 2020. Prior to this, Brigitte was the Coordinator for the Cleaner Transport Facility (CTF) and appraised and advised on mobility projects in the urban mobility, rail and road sector in- and outside Europe.

"I'm passionate about accelerating the needed transformation in mobility to keep the world a sustainable environment to live in, while trying to make it a more 'just' one."

Birgitte's educational journey saw her studying at the Technical University in Delft to become a "quintessential Dutch engineer" who knows how to deal with water in a land largely below sea-level.

Following this, Birgitte worked for over 10 years as an advisor for large infrastructure projects while she did her law studies at Erasmus, Rotterdam in the evening. In 2012, she took a sabbatical and studied economics at a high pace, worked a bit on consultancy jobs, helped start-ups and did an internship with a competition policy firm.

Expanding, modernising and adapting transport needs

Looking at how sustainable transport investment builds greener infrastructure for a future without fossil fuels, Birgitte says that it also has to expand, modernise, and adapt to the needs of the future.

"Transport is also the backbone of the modern economy, allowing for the movement of goods, services, capital, and workers across countries. The freedom of movement of people and goods is impossible without transport infrastructure. But transport is the largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in the European Union. It accounts for around 31% of total emissions in the EU and 24% worldwide in 2019," explains Birgitte.

"As a big transport lender, the European Investment Bank is trying to mobilise investments in green and innovative transport. By financing a vast array of projects and initiatives all over the world, the Bank shows we can strike a balance between greater demand of mobility and sustainability. Here is how financing innovation and energy transition could help transform the transport sector in a truly sustainable way."