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Hot money: Illuminating the financing of high-carbon infrastructure in the developing world

Major infrastructure financiers will have to significantly decarbonize their investments to meet mounting promises to cut carbon emissions to “net-zero” by mid-century. We provide new details about those needed shifts. Using two World Bank databases of infrastructure projects throughout the developi...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Ball, Jeffrey, Pastor, Angela Ortega, Liou, David, Dickey, Emily
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Elsevier 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8605337/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34841224
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2021.103358
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author Ball, Jeffrey
Pastor, Angela Ortega
Liou, David
Dickey, Emily
author_facet Ball, Jeffrey
Pastor, Angela Ortega
Liou, David
Dickey, Emily
author_sort Ball, Jeffrey
collection PubMed
description Major infrastructure financiers will have to significantly decarbonize their investments to meet mounting promises to cut carbon emissions to “net-zero” by mid-century. We provide new details about those needed shifts. Using two World Bank databases of infrastructure projects throughout the developing world, and applying a methodology for imputing the projects' likely future carbon output, we assess the emissions profile of power-plant projects executed from 2018 through 2020 — the three years immediately preceding the spate of net-zero pledges. We find that approximately half the generation executed in those years is too carbon-intensive to align with keeping Earth's average temperature from exceeding 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, largely because of the prevalence of new natural-gas–fired power plants. We also find new evidence of host countries' agency in shaping carbon trajectories: Much of the climate-misaligned financing is not foreign but domestic. And we find different institutions are financing infrastructure portfolios with significantly differing carbon intensities.
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spelling pubmed-86053372021-11-26 Hot money: Illuminating the financing of high-carbon infrastructure in the developing world Ball, Jeffrey Pastor, Angela Ortega Liou, David Dickey, Emily iScience Article Major infrastructure financiers will have to significantly decarbonize their investments to meet mounting promises to cut carbon emissions to “net-zero” by mid-century. We provide new details about those needed shifts. Using two World Bank databases of infrastructure projects throughout the developing world, and applying a methodology for imputing the projects' likely future carbon output, we assess the emissions profile of power-plant projects executed from 2018 through 2020 — the three years immediately preceding the spate of net-zero pledges. We find that approximately half the generation executed in those years is too carbon-intensive to align with keeping Earth's average temperature from exceeding 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, largely because of the prevalence of new natural-gas–fired power plants. We also find new evidence of host countries' agency in shaping carbon trajectories: Much of the climate-misaligned financing is not foreign but domestic. And we find different institutions are financing infrastructure portfolios with significantly differing carbon intensities. Elsevier 2021-10-26 /pmc/articles/PMC8605337/ /pubmed/34841224 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2021.103358 Text en © 2021 The Author(s) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Ball, Jeffrey
Pastor, Angela Ortega
Liou, David
Dickey, Emily
Hot money: Illuminating the financing of high-carbon infrastructure in the developing world
title Hot money: Illuminating the financing of high-carbon infrastructure in the developing world
title_full Hot money: Illuminating the financing of high-carbon infrastructure in the developing world
title_fullStr Hot money: Illuminating the financing of high-carbon infrastructure in the developing world
title_full_unstemmed Hot money: Illuminating the financing of high-carbon infrastructure in the developing world
title_short Hot money: Illuminating the financing of high-carbon infrastructure in the developing world
title_sort hot money: illuminating the financing of high-carbon infrastructure in the developing world
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8605337/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34841224
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2021.103358
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