As West Goes Green, China Dominates Global Energy Infrastructure Finance

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Lending lifts Beijing’s diplomatic clout in developing world and opens up overseas markets

China turbo-charged its lending to overseas energy projects last year, burnishing the attraction of its “infrastructure diplomacy” to the developing world and reinforcing its position as the dominant supplier of global development finance as Donald Trump draws back on such US funding abroad.

A new database, published on Tuesday by Boston University’s Global Economic Governance Initiative, shows that lending by China’s two global development banks rose 40 per cent last year to $48.4bn — a figure estimated to be several times the total funds allocated to energy infrastructure by the World Bank and other western-backed lending agencies.

“China is . . . exporting its model of infrastructure-led development abroad to those countries that are demanding energy and infrastructure but can’t get the financing from traditional sources,” said Kevin Gallagher, a Boston University professor and co-director of the Global Economic Governance Initiative.

He estimated that China’s lending to overseas energy projects was close triple the average annual energy finance of $16.9bn provided by the World Bank and three other institutions, the Asian Development Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and the African Development Bank, between 2007-2015.

Much of China’s lending to oil, gas, coal, hydropower and other energy facilities in 2016 was directed toward the developing world and in particular to countries covered by “One Belt One Road”, a key geopolitical strategy championed by Xi Jinping, the Chinese president.

Mr Trump, by contrast, has proposed big cuts to funding for the US Agency for International Development, as well as for the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. This US stance is likely to cede further dominance of international development finance to China, analysts said.

Taken together, the China Development Bank (CDB) and the Export-Import Bank of China (Ex-Im Bank) already eclipse the World Bank in total international assets, according to Boston University data.

Sam Geall, executive editor at China Dialogue, sees China’s increase in global energy finance in geopolitical terms. “China is opening the prospect that it will be managing a lot of power infrastructure, particularly in the developing world and in the electrification sector and that puts them in a powerful position globally,” said Mr Geall, who is also an associate fellow at Chatham House, a UK think-tank.

In terms of sector, China’s finance was directed mainly towards oil, gas, coal and hydropower plants (see chart), marking a shift from previous years when Beijing devoted a larger share of its capital toward funding the construction of coal-fired power stations.

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April 4, 2017 at 06:52AM

Professor Michael Mann destroys the case for action on climate change

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Guest Opinion by Larry Kummer. From the Fabius Maximus website. Summary: The House Science committee heard from three climate scientists. The testimony of the activist, Michael Mann, destroyed the case for strong public policy action to fight climate change. He deserves attention. Sadly, the attention has been on the least important parts of his testimony. […]

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April 4, 2017 at 06:00AM

The WMO’s Dubious Omissions…Arctic Of The 1930s And 1940s Just As Warm As Today!

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Learning from the climate’s history: the Arctic heat waves of the 1930s and 40s

By Dr. Sebastian Lüning and Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt
[German text translated/edited by P Gosselin]

Climate alarm at the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) was reported on 21 March 2017 at the German online derwesten.de:

Heat waves in the Arctic – climate scientists sound the alarm
[…] During the winter in the Arctic temperatures reached near the melting point. It wasn’t the only weather extreme that climate scientists reported on. Such a heat wave occurred in the Arctic at least three times at the start of 2017, so reported the World Weather Organisation (WMO) in Geneva. Mighty Atlantic currents had delivered warm, moist air to the Arctic. At the peak of winter in the period when it should be freezing, temperatures reached near freezing on some days. The polar jet stream – a wind current that circles the planet at high altitudes – thus impacts the global weather.”

Do we really find ourselves on the verge of disaster? Is it getting hotter and hotter in the Arctic?

Let’s look at the HadCRUT4 temperatures in Arctic (Fig. 1). One clearly sees the warming phase of 1990-2005. Before and after that there were a bit wavy temperature plateaus. There hasn’t been any significant warming in the Arctic in 10 years.

Fig. 1: Arctic temperature since 1957. Data: HadCRUT4, Chart: Climate4You.

Now let’s extend the time scale and look back 100 years. What a surprise: In the 1930s and 1940s there were two heat decades in the Arctic which were almost as warm as today (Fig. 2). This is just a small fact that went missing in the WMO press release and in the derwesten.de article.

Fig. 2: Arctic temperature since 1920. Data: HadCRUT4, Chart: Climate4You.

The earlier Arctic heat years are impressive when we look at the temperature plot of the island city of Akureyri (Fig. 3):

Fig. 3: Temperature plot of the Arctic location of Akureyri since 1880. Source: NASA/GISS.

Now what could have caused it to warm up in the 1930s and 1940s? Here it is enough to look back at the 60-year Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO). This is easily done at the NOAA website (Fig. 4).

Figure 4: AMO

The curves at Wikipedia or elsewhere are perhaps more colorful, but they often don’t include the last years. The main drive behind the Arctic warming of the 1990s and 2000s was the simultaneously strong rise in the AMO.

The heat waves reported by the WMO happen to fit very well with the current high plateau of the AMO (Fig. 4). You don’t need to be a fortune teller to realistically estimate what remains ahead: the AMO plateau could continue for a few more years. A continued massive warming is not expected because the AMO peak has already been reached.

Eventually sometime in the coming years the drop in the AMO will begin. And correspondingly so will the Arctic temperatures . A look back at the climate history really pays off.

Winston Churchill long knew:

The further one looks back in the past, the further one sees into the future.

Some day the ladies and gentlemen at the news media will realize this. The art of fact-checking seems to have been left on the wayside since the invention of the copy-and-paste function.

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April 4, 2017 at 05:57AM

Paintings, sunspots and frost fairs: Rethinking the Little Ice Age

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The whole concept of the ‘Little Ice Age’ is ‘misleading’, as the changes were small-scale, seasonal and insignificant compared with present-day global warming, a group of solar and climate scientists argue. Explanations for the cooling to Earth’s climate, thought to have occurred between the 16th and 19th centuries, include low solar activity, volcanic eruptions, human […]

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April 4, 2017 at 04:21AM