They may have made a token cut back in China but they are still working on coal globally. China’s two global policy banks, the China Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank of China, have already provided more than $43 billion in overseas coal financing, show the Chinese energy investments info published this year by Boston University.
Some of the countries targeted for coal-power expansion, like Egypt or Pakistan, currently burn almost no coal, and the new coal plants could set the course of their national energy policies for decades, environmentalists warn.
In Egypt, coal projects by Shanghai Electric and other global developers are set to bring the country’s coal-fired capacity to 17,000 megawatts, from near zero, according to the Urgewald database.
Pakistan’s coal capacity is set to grow to 15,300 megawatts from 190. In Malawi, planned coal projects would bring its coal-fired capacity to 3,500 megawatts from zero.
Chinese companies are not the only drivers of the global coal expansion.
The world’s single largest coal-plant developer is India’s NTP corp. which plans to build more than 38,000 megawatts of new coal capacity in India and Bangladesh. Japan’s Marubeni Corp. is also involved in joint ventures for a combined 5,500 megawatts of new coal generation in Myanmar, Vietnam, Philippines and Indonesia, according to the database. Japan is also adding to its coal-fired capacity at home, to make up for an energy shortfall in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. A Marubeni spokesman confirmed projects in the four countries as of 2017. Western investors also continue to play a role in financing new coal plants overseas. Bonds and shares of the world’s biggest coal developers, like India’s National Thermal Power and Marubeni, are frequently found in the portfolios of large institutional investors and banks.
To much profit involved to stop.