{"id":5980,"date":"2018-10-04T13:31:01","date_gmt":"2018-10-04T17:31:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/?p=5980"},"modified":"2022-06-30T12:47:01","modified_gmt":"2022-06-30T16:47:01","slug":"estimating-chinese-foreign-investment-in-the-electric-power-sector","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/2018\/10\/04\/estimating-chinese-foreign-investment-in-the-electric-power-sector\/","title":{"rendered":"Estimating Chinese Foreign Investment in the Electric Power Sector"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment21084\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment21084\" style=\"width: 646px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/gdp\/files\/2018\/10\/omi-mutalik-uQii72Tt5MM-unsplash-636x477.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"636\" height=\"477\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-21084\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/files\/2018\/10\/omi-mutalik-uQii72Tt5MM-unsplash-636x477.jpg 636w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/files\/2018\/10\/omi-mutalik-uQii72Tt5MM-unsplash-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/files\/2018\/10\/omi-mutalik-uQii72Tt5MM-unsplash-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/files\/2018\/10\/omi-mutalik-uQii72Tt5MM-unsplash-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/files\/2018\/10\/omi-mutalik-uQii72Tt5MM-unsplash-2048x1536.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 636px) 100vw, 636px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment21084\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Nilwande, Ahmednagar, India. Photo by Omi Mutalik via Unsplash.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">China began investing in overseas power projects in 2003, with investments accelerating in the years since. After a steady growth period from 2003-2013, the past four years have witnessed a substantial increase in the volume of Chinese investment.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In a\u00a0<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/files\/2019\/10\/UpdatedGCI-GDP.WP_.-Li-KPG-and-Mauzerall-2018-copy-1.pdf\"><b><i>new working paper<\/i><\/b><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/profile\/kevin-p-gallagher\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Kevin P. Gallagher<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/profile\/zhongshu-li\/\">Zhongsu Li<\/a> and Denise Mauzerall provide the first estimates of the generation capacity of Chinese overseas investment in the electric power sector. They analyze the spatial and technological distribution of China\u2019s overseas electric power investments around the world and the pollution intensity of Chinese coal-fired power plants relative to those held by non-Chinese entities.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h5><b>Main findings:<\/b><\/h5>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Chinese firms hold approximately $115 billion in electric power assets globally, with a power capacity of 81 GW power plants outside China owned or partially owned by Chinese firms.\u00a0<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"2\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The absolute amount equals the total generating capacity of Iran in 2015, which ranks 14th in the world.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Chinese electric power plants span the globe, but are largely found in emerging markets and developing countries, particularly in Asia and Latin America.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">China invests in a diverse portfolio of electricity generating assets, with the vast majority of Chinese investment going to coal, hydropower and gas while the share of solar and wind is relatively small but may be rising.\u00a0<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"2\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Coal projects represent 30 percent of the total capacity, followed by gas and hydropower projects.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The majority of Chinese greenfield investment in coal plants use subcritical technologies (55 percent), though 84 percent of non-Chinese coal plants are subcritical, meaning those with lower heat efficiency of around 40 percent.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Chinese investors have introduced more efficient core technologies and less polluting end-of-pipe technologies than non-Chinese firms.\u00a0<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"2\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Of coal plants with participation by Chinese firms through mergers and acquisitions (M&amp;As), 71 percent are subcritical plants that deploy relatively strong end-of-pipe technologies.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">By developing a new accounting method for tracking Chinese overseas investments, linking foreign investments to emissions in power plants by nationality, Gallagher, Li and Mauzerall\u00a0 argue analysts and policymakers could obtain a fuller picture of a nation\u2019s carbon footprint. In addition to consumption-based accounting, an ownership-based accounting system could provide a new viewpoint of carbon emissions in the context of globalization. Quantifying such ownership-based carbon footprint could expose potentially huge cross-border carbon leakage. In the coal sector, for instance, Japan and Germany have long been recognized as major coal investors in developing countries although they have successfully cut down domestic carbon emission. Gallagher, Li and Mauzerall combined publicly accessible information with a commercial database and identified Chinese ownership of global power projects at the unit level. In the future, the methodology could be used to track ownership of other nationalities and to estimate the global carbon footprint of major power investing countries.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/files\/2019\/10\/UpdatedGCI-GDP.WP_.-Li-KPG-and-Mauzerall-2018-copy-1.pdf\" class=\"button\">Read the Working Paper<\/a>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>China began investing in overseas power projects in 2003, with investments accelerating in the years since. After a steady growth period from 2003-2013, the past four years have witnessed a substantial increase in the volume of Chinese investment.\u00a0 In a\u00a0new working paper, Kevin P. Gallagher, Zhongsu Li and Denise Mauzerall provide the first estimates of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5268,"featured_media":21084,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1149,75,70,66,1070,156,72,105,77,104],"tags":[189,2313,2312,1767,806,2311,1446,1398,510,1567,583,1623,1699,176,1043,396,1683,999,2310],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5980"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5268"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5980"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5980\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21089,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5980\/revisions\/21089"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}