Later this month, China will mark the 10th anniversary of the “belt and road initiative” (BRI), its global infrastructure project, at a major international conference in Beijing.
The summit, set to be attended by more than 110 countries, according to Chinese state media, will include “green development” as the focus of one of three high-level forums.
Yet the BRI has faced significant criticism in its first decade for supporting the development of overseas fossil-fuel infrastructure, particularly coal-fired power stations.
Although Chinese president Xi Jinping has pledged to end support for overseas coal power – and his country has signalled an intention to pivot its infrastructure initiative towards “high quality”, signifying, among other values, low-carbon development – questions remain over the BRI’s direction in its second decade.
Carbon Brief has asked leading experts what impact the BRI might have on climate action in the years ahead.
Energy projects and the BRI
The BRI is a global infrastructure project that aims to develop trade routes between China and the rest of the world. It has been criticised for supporting development of overseas fossil fuel infrastructure, particularly coal-fired power.
China’s role in constructing BRI projects largely takes the form of Chinese commercial involvement in project development or loans provided by Chinese financial institutions.
China’s policy banks have reduced their lending, with financing now provided by a broader range of actors, from the state-owned Bank of China to HSBC.
China rarely owns the assets it develops, with Sri Lanka’s Hambantota Port being a well-known exception.
Energy and transport infrastructure are the most common types of BRI project. In 2023 to date, for example, energy projects made up 36% of BRI investment, while transport projects accounted for 28%, according to the Green Finance and Development Center (GFDC).
GFDC found that cumulative investment across projects in all sectors exceeded $1tn as of August 2023, according to its analysis of data compiled by the Chinese ministry of commerce, the American Enterprise Institute and by GFDC itself.
The Council for Foreign Relations found that “between 2014 and 2017, 91% of energy-sector loans made by six major Chinese banks to BRI countries were for fossil-fuel projects”.
From 2017, however, the Chinese government began encouraging the “greening” of the BRI. Then, in 2021, president Xi Jinping pledged that China “would not build new coal-fired power projects abroad”.
Recent BRI projects developed with the aim of reducing carbon emissions include Indonesia’s “Whoosh” high-speed railway, the Noor Abu Dhabi solar plant in the United Arab Emirates and Sri Lanka’s Colombo International Container Terminal (see more below).
Researchers also found that, in line with Xi’s pledge, “no new investments in coal power plants have been recorded under the BRI”, China Dialogue reports, although “loopholes” have allowed some coal projects to proceed.
Below, Carbon Brief asks four leading experts the same question: China has stated an intention to pivot the BRI towards low-carbon energy development. How do you think the BRI could affect climate action over the next decade?
Their responses have been edited for clarity and length.
Prof Kevin P Gallagher, director of the Boston University Global Development Policy Center:
As the BRI moves into its second decade, China can solidify its pivot toward low-carbon development in the global south. According to our research at the Boston University Global Development Policy Center, in the early stages of the BRI the majority of China’s overseas energy finance was…in fossil fuels in general and coal-fired power plants in particular.
Emissions from the operating Chinese-financed power plants around the world now emit upwards of 245m tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) annually, roughly the energy-related CO2 emissions from the entire country of Spain or Thailand annually.
In 2021, China announced it would not build new coal-fired power projects abroad and to step up support for low-carbon development. Moving forward, China could pledge to ramp up overseas financing for low carbon development and adopt a green project pipeline facility to ensure alignment with these directives.
Prof Lin Boqiang, dean of the China Institute for Studies in Energy Policy, Xiamen University:
In some countries along the “belt and road”, despite the rapid growth of energy demand, the development of green energy is limited due to their relatively backward economic and technological level and the lack of advanced clean-energy technology and facilities. Through the construction of renewable energy projects, such as wind and solar power, China can provide technical, financial and experience support to host countries to promote the development and upgrading of their renewable energy industries.
By providing more clean-energy supplies to these countries…China helps them reduce their dependence on traditional energy sources and promotes energy transformation and green development. At the same time, some countries along the belt and road have problems such as unstable energy supply, energy poverty and low energy efficiency…Cooperation to develop renewable energy projects…will help these countries improve their energy security and promote sustainable development along the belt and road.
Yasiru Ranaraja, founding director of the Belt and Road Initiative Sri Lanka (BRISL):
China’s commitment to shift the BRI towards low-carbon energy development has significant implications for climate action in the coming decade. When we delve into the context of global climate efforts, we encounter a historical divide between developed and developing nations regarding climate justice and the debate over the common but differentiated responsibilities principle in climate action.
While all parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) acknowledge the importance of addressing climate change, the approach to climate action varies among member states. Many developing nations prioritise economic growth, poverty reduction, climate mitigation, and energy security over stringent top-down climate regulations.
China, through the BRI, has emerged as a crucial player in advocating a three-phase approach to low-carbon development: funding, construction and operation. Under the BRI umbrella, numerous infrastructure projects…are dedicated to green development…For example, in Sri Lanka, the Colombo International Container Terminal (CICT), which is an investment development project under BRI, has embraced green technology since its inception in 2014.
This terminal has witnessed a remarkable increase in cargo volumes over the years while prioritising environmental sustainability. The shift to electric cranes has resulted in a 45% reduction in CO2 emissions and a 95% decrease in diesel consumption…Additionally, more than 80% of the terminal’s electricity comes from solar technology. The terminal’s success story…exemplifies how commercial prosperity and environmental protection can coexist harmoniously.
Prof Christoph Nedopil Wang, director of the Griffith Asia Institute, Griffith University:
China controls almost all parts of the green-energy supply chain – from critical minerals for batteries to wafer production for solar, from manufacturing wind turbines to the necessary financing. Without China’s cooperation, a green-energy transition is hardly achievable – whether in the BRI or beyond…BRI countries, meanwhile, must improve their energy planning, energy policy and power markets to be able to attract sufficient Chinese investments in green energy. This should include a phase-down of fossil subsidies and better utilisation of blended finance to reduce financing cost for green energies, as well as longer-term green energy PPAs (power purchase agreements).
A big question remains on the accelerated phase-down of Chinese sponsored coal-fired power plants and replacement with green energy. A recent study by the Green Finance & Development Center and Climate Smart Ventures shows significant financial benefits for Chinese sponsors of plants in Vietnam and Pakistan when accelerating retirement and replacement.
The post Experts: How will the next decade of China’s ‘belt and road initiative’ impact climate action? appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Experts: How will the next decade of China’s ‘belt and road initiative’ impact climate action?
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Lena Luig is the head of the International Agricultural Policy Division at the Heinrich Böll Foundation, a member of the Global Alliance for the Future of Food. Anna Lappé is the Executive Director of the Global Alliance for the Future of Food.
As toxic clouds loom over Tehran and Beirut from the US and Israel’s bombardment of oil depots and civilian infrastructure in the region’s ongoing war, the world is once again witnessing the not-so-subtle connections between conflict, hunger, food insecurity and the vulnerability of global food systems dependent on fossil fuels, dominated by a few powerful countries and corporations.
The conflict in Iran is having a huge impact on the world’s fertilizer supply. The Strait of Hormuz is a critical trade route in the region for nearly half of the global supply of urea, the main synthetic fertilizer derived from natural gas through the conversion of ammonia.
With the Strait impacted by Iran’s blockades, prices of urea have shot up by 35% since the war started, just as planting season starts in many parts of the world, putting millions of farmers and consumers at risk of increasing production costs and food price spikes, resulting in food insecurity, particularly for low-income households. The World Food Programme has projected that an extra 45 million people would be pushed into acute hunger because of rises in food, oil and shipping costs, if the war continues until June.
Pesticides and synthetic fertilizer leave system fragile
On the face of it, this looks like a supply chain issue, but at the core of this crisis lies a truth about many of our food systems around the world: the instability and injustice in the very design of systems so reliant on these fossil fuel inputs for our food.
At the Global Alliance, a strategic alliance of philanthropic foundations working to transform food systems, we have been documenting the fossil fuel-food nexus, raising alarm about the fragility of a system propped up by fossil fuels, with 15% of annual fossil fuel use going into food systems, in part because of high-cost, fossil fuel-based inputs like pesticides and synthetic fertilizer. The Heinrich Böll Foundation has also been flagging this threat consistently, most recently in the Pesticide Atlas and Soil Atlas compendia.
We’ve seen this before: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 sparked global disruptions in fertilizer supply and food price volatility. As the conflict worsened, fertilizer prices spiked – as much from input companies capitalizing on the crisis for speculation as from real cost increases from production and transport – triggering a food price crisis around the world.
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Since then, fertilizer industry profit margins have continued to soar. In 2022, the largest nine fertilizer producers increased their profit margins by more than 35% compared to the year before—when fertilizer prices were already high. As Lena Bassermann and Dr. Gideon Tups underscore in the Heinrich Böll Foundation’s Soil Atlas, the global dependencies of nitrogen fertilizer impacted economies around the world, especially state budgets in already indebted and import-dependent economies, as well as farmers across Africa.
Learning lessons from the war in Ukraine, many countries invested heavily in renewable energy and/or increased domestic oil production as a way to decrease dependency on foreign fossil fuels. But few took the same approach to reimagining domestic food systems and their food sovereignty.
Agroecology as an alternative
There is another way. Governments can adopt policy frameworks to encourage reductions in synthetic fertilizer and pesticide use, especially in regions that currently massively overuse nitrogen fertilizer. At the African Union fertilizer and Soil Health Summit in 2024, African leaders at least agreed that organic fertilizers should be subsidized as well, not only mineral fertilizers, but we can go farther in actively promoting agricultural pathways that reduce fossil fuel dependency.
In 2024, the Global Alliance organized dozens of philanthropies to call for a tenfold increase in investments to help farmers transition from fossil fuel dependency towards agroecological approaches that prioritize livelihoods, health, climate, and biodiversity.
In our research, we detail the huge opportunity to repurpose harmful subsidies currently supporting inputs like synthetic fertilizer and pesticides towards locally-sourced bio-inputs and biofertilizer production. We know this works: There are powerful stories of hope and change from those who have made this transition, despite only receiving a fraction of the financing that industrial agriculture receives, with evidence of benefits from stable incomes and livelihoods to better health and climate outcomes.
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Inspiring examples abound: G-BIACK in Kenya is training farmers how to produce their own high-quality compost; start-ups like the Evola Company in Cambodia are producing both nutrient-rich organic fertilizer and protein-rich animal feed with black soldier fly farming; Sabon Sake in Ghana is enriching sugarcane bagasse – usually organic waste – with microbial agents and earthworms to turn it into a rich vermicompost.
These efforts, grounded in ecosystems and tapping nature for soil fertility and to manage pest pressures, are just some of the countless examples around the world, tapping the skill and knowledge of millions of farmers. On a national and global policy level, the Agroecology Coalition, with 480+ members, including governments, civil society organizations, academic institutions, and philanthropic foundations, is supporting a transition toward agroecology, working with natural systems to produce abundant food, boost biodiversity, and foster community well-being.
Fertilizer industry spins “clean” products
We must also inoculate ourselves from the fertilizer industry’s public relations spin, which includes promoting the promise that their products can be produced without heavy reliance on fossil fuels. Despite experts debunking the viability of what the industry has dubbed “green hydrogen” or “green or clean ammonia”, the sector still promotes this narrative, arguing that these are produced with resource-intensive renewable energy or Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), a costly and unreliable technology for reducing emissions.
As we mourn this conflict’s senseless destruction and death, including hundreds of children, we also recognize that peace cannot mean a return to business-as-usual. We need to upend the systems that allow the richest and most powerful to have dominion over so much.
This includes fighting for a food system that is based on genuine sovereignty and justice, free from dependency on fossil fuels, one that honors natural systems and puts power into the hands of communities and food producers themselves.
The post Middle East war is another wake-up call for fossil fuel-reliant food systems appeared first on Climate Home News.
Middle East war is another wake-up call for fossil fuel-reliant food systems
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