China is one of the world’s major sources of infrastructure finance in developing countries. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the country’s massive scheme for financing infrastructure, is active in well over 100 countries. China has emerged as one of the most significant financiers of, and investors in, global power infrastructure, with $52 billion invested in coal power generation in the past two decades in BRI countries.

On September 21st, 2021, in a major departure from its practice of backing significant coal investments overseas, China pledged it would stop building new coal power plants and support low-carbon and clean energy. A year later, evidence shows that China has indeed followed through and ceased grid-connected coal-fired power project finance. Now China has the opportunity to marshal its substantial resources and capabilities to accelerate decarbonization.

However, China’s pivot from coal didn’t decisively end overseas finance for fossil fuels. Experts worry about an unsustainable increase in China’s overseas gas investment as discussions to convert several invested coal pipeline projects to gas emerge, which would lock in risky gas supplies and polluting infrastructure for decades. READ further from the source