By Niccolò Manych and Ishana Ratan The year 2023 marks the tenth anniversary of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Over the last decade, the BRI has evolved into the world’s largest international investment program. In 2022, the annual financial volume reached $67.8 billion, with a significant portion directed towards the power sector. Notably, investments […]
By Xiaofei Qin Against the backdrop of climate change, the world has experienced a concerning rise in extreme heat events in recent times. Between 2010-2019, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) recorded 38 heatwaves that accounted for the deaths of over 70,000 people, making them among the deadliest hazards. Urban […]
By Evelyn Lauren The utilization of large-scale, national-level administrative health data is a very powerful tool to monitor the health of populations. It allows for directly assessing the impact of health policies on a nationwide scale by leveraging the availability of millions of records, eliminating the need for interpolations that are often required when using […]
By Claire Paul Following the hottest summer on record, policymakers, representatives from international financial institutions, researchers and civil society will gather for two key global summits from September 4-6: the Africa Climate Summit (ACS) hosted in Nairobi, Kenya, and the Finance in Common Summit (FiCS) hosted in Cartagena, Colombia. The FiCS seeks to reinforce commitments in […]
By Keyi Tang Africa has major infrastructure needs if the continent hopes to meet the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The African Development Bank estimates that the continent faces an annual financing gap of $68 billion to $108 billion for necessary infrastructure projects like roads, railways and power plants. Over the past two […]
By Ishana Ratan China is the global leader for low-cost solar panel manufacturing, but their industrial scale up has provoked tariffs from rival competitors: the European Union (EU) and United States (US) imposed antidumping (AD) duties on solar module imports in 2012 and 2013, respectively. After the EU and US escalated the initial tariffs on […]
In light of the rapidly rising climate change threat, emerging economies are vying to build a domestic solar industry across the value chain. Scholars have argued that industrial policy that targets manufacturing and learning from foreign direct investment (FDI) creates forward linkages in downstream segments of the supply chain in emerging economies. Recently though amid […]
Remaining below 2°C global temperature warming as stipulated by the Paris Agreement requires phasing out fossil fuels in the power sector, but coal power alone has the potential to exhaust the emissions budget for 1.5°C if all plants currently planned were realized and run until the end of their expected lifetime. In fact, coal capacity […]
By Niccolò Manych Recent headlines have drawn attention to new domestic coal capacity in China. This development has so far not been discussed in light of changes in China’s investment in overseas coal plants, despite the interconnectedness between the two. Over the last decade, there has been contrasting development, with a decrease in domestic coal […]
As Group of 20 (G20) members have committed to transition to low-carbon economies, they need to adopt a carefully coordinated approach to ensure an orderly transition that considers the potential cross-border spillover risks of domestic transitions. A new Think20 (T20) policy brief by Rishikesh Ram Bhandary, Régis Gourdel, Xiaobei He, Lara Merling and Irene Monasterolo […]