The Belt and Road Initiative has significant climate impacts. Several studies help estimate the nature and scale of those impacts.

Chen et al. (2021) estimates 12 Gt of CO₂ emissions over the roughly 40-year life of overseas power plants that were financed by either Chinese policy banks or greenfield FDI and in operation or under construction as of 2019. (12 Gt over 40 years implies an average of roughly 0.3 Gt/year.) The study estimated 10.4 Gt of CO₂ emissions from Japanese-financed plants and 3.4 Gt of CO₂ emissions from US-financed plants.¹⁰⁴
Springer et al. (2021), estimating emissions intensities (CO₂ emissions per unit of output) for coal power plants operating in Asia in 2018, find that plants with Chinese financing or EPC contracting tended to have modestly lower average emissions intensities and higher energy efficiency than plants without Chinese participation. They project 11 Gt CO₂ of lifetime emissions over 40-year lives from plants with Chinese financing or contracting (0.275 Gt/year), against 25 Gt CO₂ for plants without Chinese involvement (0.625 Gt/year).¹⁰⁵
Tao et al. (2020) chart the expected lifetime emissions of 458 international power plant projects across 15 BRI countries that signed engineering and construction contracts with Chinese firms between 2005–19. (The 15 countries selected comprised two-thirds of the value of “newly signed project-contracting contracts” along the BRI in 2017.) Their data suggests an estimated 18 Gt of emissions from these plants over lifetimes of around 35 years (roughly 0.5 Gt/year).¹⁰⁶
New hydropower projects can also drive heat-trapping gas emissions through accompanying land-use changes: for instance, reservoir flooding that prompts methane releases from decomposing organic matter. Measuring these impacts can be very difficult, and footprints vary substantially across projects. Räsänen et al. (2018) use statistical models to produce “tentative” estimates of emissions from around 140 existing and planned hydropower reservoirs in Southeast Asia, where China has been a major hydropower developer. Their results suggest that most dams have similar emissions footprints to other renewables, but that a minority may be similar to fossil fuels in their impacts.¹⁰⁷

Cancellations of coal power projects that had been announced or under construction over the past few years may affect these projections.¹⁰⁸ Still, the studies ¬suggest that infrastructure developed by Chinese investors and contractors abroad over the past two decades will likely produce gigatonnes of carbon emissions in the coming years.

The BRI may also have emissions impacts through a variety of other channels that are more challenging to measure. Infrastructure development may prompt deforestation that removes carbon sinks and a new power plant may increase economic activity that leads to greater demand for carbon-intensive goods such as steel and cement.¹⁰⁹ Indeed, growing trade with the developing world over the past two decades has increased the share of Chinese emissions “embodied” in trade with BRI countries––that is, emissions associated with the production of exported or imported goods.¹¹⁰ Tian et al. (2019) attempt to measure the impact of the BRI upon Chinese embodied emissions from international trade; they estimate an increase of 0.18 Gt through 2016 from higher exports to BRI countries, largely reflecting cement and steel trade.¹¹¹

The climate impacts of new BRI projects during the 2020s could look very different from the prior two decades. Coal was the largest target of outbound power-sector investments during the BRI’s early years. Xi Jinping’s “no new coal” pledge, amidst mounting project cancellations, confirms that these conditions will change. More broadly, BRI outbound economic activity fell significantly in 2020–21 and its post-COVID recovery remains uncertain. This retrenchment offers the opportunity to take up the promise of a greener BRI; doing so would have enormous positive impacts for global decarbonization.

Financial Institutions

References

105

Cecilia Han Springer, Samuel Evans and Fei Teng, “An Empirical Analysis of the Environmental Performance of China’s Overseas Coal Plants,” Environmental Research Letters 16, no. 5 (May 2021): 054062.

106

Tao, Liang and Celia, “Electric Power Development Associated with the Belt and Road Initiative and Its Carbon Emissions Implications,” Applied Energy, Volume 267 (June 1, 2020) 9–10.

107

Timo A Räsänen et al., “Greenhouse Gas Emissions of Hydropower in the Mekong River Basin,” Environmental Research Letters 13, no. 3 (March 1, 2018): 034030.

108

Tao et al. “assume the projects with missing commissioning dates (or upcoming commissioning dates) will be completed successfully. When evidence occurs that a project would be discontinued, such as the Lamu coal-fired power plant in Kenya that was halted in June 2019 for lack of thorough environmental assessment, we exclude that project from the dataset to be conservative.” Tao, Liang and Celia, “Electric Power Development Associated with the Belt and Road Initiative and Its Carbon Emissions Implications,” Applied Energy, Volume 267 (June 1, 2020) 5; Chen et al., “Financing Carbon Lock-in in Developing Countries: Bilateral financing for power generation technologies from China, Japan, and the United States,” Applied Energy, Volume 300, (October 15, 2021) 4. One 1320 MW coal plant project in Turkey that was cancelled in November 2021 had an announced engineering, procurement and construction contract with a Chinese company as of 2016. Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air, “BRIEFING: 12.8 GW of Chinese Overseas Coal Projects Cancelled, but 19 GW Could Still Go Ahead.” A June 2021 study from the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air reported that 6.2 GW of coal capacity under construction as of 2017 had been cancelled. Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air, 4.5 Times as Much Overseas Coal Capacity Linked to China Cancelled or Shelved than Progressed to Construction (June 15, 2021), 5.

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Ray et al. estimate that international development finance institutions’ infrastructure projects in Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia in 2000–15 resulted in deforestation and an associated loss of carbon sinks equivalent to 0.21 Gt CO2 of emissions. Rebecca Ray, Kevin P Gallagher and Cynthia Sanborn, “Standardizing Sustainable Development?” Boston University Global Development Policy Center and the Universidad del Pacifico Center for China and Asia-Pacific Studies (2018).

110

Jing Hou et al., “A Global Analysis of CO2 and Non-CO2 GHG Emissions Embodied in Trade with Belt and Road Initiative Countries,” Ecosystem Health and Sustainability 6, no. 1 (December 16, 2020): 1761888; Tao Ding, Yadong Ning and Yan Zhang, “The Contribution of China’s Bilateral Trade to Global Carbon Emissions in the Context of Globalization,” Structural Change and Economic Dynamics 46 (September 1, 2018): 78–88.

111

Xu Tian et al., “Trade Impacts of China’s Belt and Road Initiative: From Resource and Environmental Perspectives,” Resources, Conservation and Recycling 150 (2019): 104430; See also Xin Wang et al., “Mapping the Exchange between Embodied Economic Benefits and CO2 Emissions among Belt and Road Initiative Countries,”Applied Energy 307 (February 1, 2022): 118206.