Whether China's overseas energy infrastructure projects dirtier or cleaner after the belt and road initiative?

Banban Wang and Ping Lin

Energy Policy, 2022, vol. 166, issue C

Abstract: We evaluated whether China's overseas investments in energy infrastructure were dirtier or cleaner after the Belt and Road Initiative than those of other countries with similar project and host country characteristics. We used the energy infrastructure project data from the World Bank's private participation in infrastructure database, which allows comparison among countries of investment and controls for the influences of host countries' demand. Our main findings are as follows. First, during our sample period from 2006 to 2019, the average investment volume of projects funded by China was significantly higher overall including in conventional energy projects, compared to those with other financial sources and similar features. Second, after the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the volume of projects invested in by China was comparatively smaller in conventional energy projects but larger in renewable energy projects. Third, the choice of technology type in energy projects reflected path dependency effects on both the investment and host countries' sides. Nevertheless, after the Belt and Road Initiative, China had actively begun to break away from these effects, investing more in clean energy overseas.

Keywords: Energy infrastructure investments; Belt and Road Initiative; Clean energy; PPI project (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F21 Q42 Q48 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421522002324
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:enepol:v:166:y:2022:i:c:s0301421522002324

DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2022.113007

Access Statistics for this article

Energy Policy is currently edited by N. France

More articles in Energy Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().