Hot money: Illuminating the financing of high-carbon infrastructure in the developing world
Summary: Major infrastructure financiers will have to significantly decarbonize their investments to meet mounting promises to cut carbon emissions to “net-zero” by mid-century. We provide new details about those needed shifts. Using two World Bank databases of infrastructure projects throughout the...
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Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | article |
Lenguaje: | EN |
Publicado: |
Elsevier
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://doaj.org/article/1f48d53bc9bb4bbf86aa30d47abeaea4 |
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Sumario: | Summary: Major infrastructure financiers will have to significantly decarbonize their investments to meet mounting promises to cut carbon emissions to “net-zero” by mid-century. We provide new details about those needed shifts. Using two World Bank databases of infrastructure projects throughout the developing world, and applying a methodology for imputing the projects' likely future carbon output, we assess the emissions profile of power-plant projects executed from 2018 through 2020 — the three years immediately preceding the spate of net-zero pledges. We find that approximately half the generation executed in those years is too carbon-intensive to align with keeping Earth's average temperature from exceeding 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, largely because of the prevalence of new natural-gas–fired power plants. We also find new evidence of host countries' agency in shaping carbon trajectories: Much of the climate-misaligned financing is not foreign but domestic. And we find different institutions are financing infrastructure portfolios with significantly differing carbon intensities. |
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