By Rebecca Ray By 2030, low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) other than China must mobilize an ambitious $3 trillion annually to meet their development needs and avoid the catastrophic impacts of climate change. Further complicating this challenge is the fact that development finance has slowed dramatically in the last few years. A new working paper […]
by Julie Radomski As countries around the world strive to meet their renewable energy targets, large hydroelectric dams are often framed as clean and reliable alternatives to fossil fuels. In the 21st century, Chinese development finance institutions (DFIs) have emerged as global leaders in financing hydropower, although many of these projects have faced severe environmental […]
Hydroelectric megaprojects represent an important target for Chinese development finance in the 21st century and will likely remain so given their categorization as renewable energy contributing to a green energy transition. However, Chinese-financed megadams around the world have faced numerous social, environmental and political challenges. These challenges not only inhibit the opportunity for the projects […]
By Samantha Igo As a record-breaking heat wave strains energy grids and risks public health across Europe, policymakers, activists and experts convene in Seville, Spain from June 30 to July 3 for the highly anticipated 4th International Conference on Financing for Development (FFD4). These rather rare policy events (the last was 10 years ago in […]
By Yan Wang and Yinyin Xu Energy poverty remains a persistent and widespread development challenge across Africa, where more than 600 million people, primarily in sub-Saharan regions, still lack reliable access to electricity. This situation accounts for over 80 percent of the global electricity access gap. Even though many African countries are rich in natural […]
Energy poverty is a pervasive and persistent development issue in Africa. Despite the continent’s rich natural resources, the “resource curse” remains a reality for countries with insufficient generation capacity, aging power plants, weak institutions and a lack of affordable energy finance. Additionally, the continent faces crippling energy deficits driven by urbanization and industrialization, coupled with […]
For over 15 years, China has been a vital source of development finance for low- and middle-income countries around the world, committing nearly a half-trillion dollars in public and publicly guaranteed (PPG) finance since 2008. With lending far below peak levels seen in 2015-2017, what is the current status of China’s overseas development finance? And […]
By Praveena Bandara Since the beginning of this year, the US has withdrawn from the Paris Agreement, cut back on the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) – which supported low-carbon technology (LCT) industries – and implemented staggering tariffs on its largest LCT trade partner, China. A new journal article published in Science finds that China is […]
A new class of low-carbon goods and services forms the essential inputs for the global transition to lower-carbon and climate-resilient economic growth paths. By constructing a new dataset of such low-carbon technology (LCT) trade, a new journal article published in Science by Praveena Bandara, Rebecca Ray, Jiaqi Lu and Kevin P. Gallagher finds that the […]
By Julian Watrous and Stephen Paduano The last two decades have seen a fundamental shift in global sovereign lending patterns. By the late 2010s, China emerged as the world’s largest official bilateral creditor. China’s record of infrastructure financing, primarily through its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), is now well-known. More recent, and less theorized, is […]