As falling renewable energy costs and a shadow carbon price are making coal power investments unviable the Asian Development Bank (ADB) is making a decisive shift to clean energy, according to bank energy chief Yongping Zhai.
Coal plants are becoming unviable investments, Yongping Zhai wrote in Viet Nam News, as renewable energy costs fall and the bank puts a carbon price in excess of $36 a tonne on lending decisions. The bank last approved a coal power project five years ago, he said, to convert Pakistan’s Jamshoro plant to run on coal instead of heavy fuel oil. Last year it backed $2 billion worth of investment into renewable energy and energy efficiency, on the way to a $3bn target for 2020. Some of its more innovative projects include a battery storage pilot to back up wind power in Pakistan, and a floating solar farm in Vietnam. “Clean energy will power Asia’s future,” wrote the bank executive. “We will ensure that, as we meet our own climate finance targets, ADB’s lending portfolio has no place for ‘dirty energy’.” In the “transition” to clean energy, the bank continues to support gas-fired power plants, which emit roughly half the CO2 of coal plants.
Analysis by think-tank E3G based on 2015-16 data found that ADB was still investing slightly more in fossil fuel projects than green energy. On overall alignment with the goals of the Paris Agreement, it ranked ADB fourth out of six major development banks. The authors urged ADB to limit oil and gas lending and update its carbon price. How Asia meets its fast-growing energy demand is critical to meeting global climate goals. Many governments and financiers are still betting on coal, which would blow the targets, but development banks are moving towards cleaner options.
[This article originally appeared on climatechangenews.com.]
Every day humanitarian aid workers help millions of people around the world, regardless of who they are and where they are. With expert knowledge and support, humanitarian workers are well placed to create a better environment for the people that they serve as well as for themselves.
The pro-coal position of Poland’s energy ministry has thrown sand into the country’s climate diplomacy as COP24 president-designate Michał Kurtyka intensifies his diplomatic tour ahead of the United Nation’s annual climate meeting later this year in Katowice.
As governments take stock of the adequacy of the Paris Agreement, willingness to raise the level of ambition will depend significantly on confidence that a variety of promises are being kept. Many of these relate to fundamental commitments around international solidarity. A solidarity of which we are in sore need today, on far too many fronts.
As December’s UN climate summit in Poland rapidly approaches, it is shaping up to be a race against time to prepare the so-called Paris rulebook, which will govern how the landmark climate agreement will actually be implemented.