China’s plans to fund dozens of overseas coal-fired power plants from Simbabwe to Indonesia are expected to emit more carbon than major developed countries, threatening global efforts to combat climate change, environmentalists warned on Dec. 10.
Under the Paris climate agreement signed in 2015, China has positioned itself as a climate change leader, and Chinese President Xi Jinping said in September that China would achieve its carbon neutral goal by 2060, AFP reported.
But Chinese state-owned companies are investing billions of dollars to build coal-fired power plants overseas, which excludes them from China’s domestic carbon neutrality calculations. Environmentalists say this puts the goal of curbing global warming to within 2 degrees Celsius in jeopardy.
Christine Shearer, head of coal research at Global Energy Monitor, said “new power plants could continue to operate for years beyond 2030, essentially running counter to global efforts to curb climate change. “
According to the Global Development Policy Center at Boston University, these new coal-fired power plants under construction will produce 19 gigawatts (19GW) of electricity and 115 million tons of carbon emissions annually.
According to British Petroleum’s annual global energy assessment, China also has nearly three times as many overseas thermal power plants in the pipeline, meaning that its carbon emissions from overseas power plants will be greater than those currently emitted by major economies such as the United Kingdom, Turkey and Italy.
According to Boston University’s China Global Energy Finance Database, China’s top two policy banks invested $251 billion in overseas energy programs between 2000 and 2018, with 23.1 percent of that invested in coal programs.
China’s overseas power plants currently under construction include the $3 billion Sengwa power plant in Simbabwe, which is one of the largest in Africa.
In addition, there are at least eight other plans in Pakistan, including a $2 billion power plant in the volatile Balochistan province.
All of these new projects are in countries that have joined China’s Belt and Road initiative, where the energy future is tied up in coal consumption.
Li Shuo, an expert at Greenpeace China, said the coal money wave “is undermining the efforts of developing countries to switch to cleaner alternative energy sources” and could “threaten the Paris agreement.
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