The effect of foreign investment on Asian coal power plants

Asia has built 90% of new coal-fired capacity worldwide in the past 20 years, attracting billions of dollars of foreign investment. This paper explores how such foreign investment has affected the environmental performance of a set of 2108 Asian coal power plants. The findings suggest that foreign-funded power plants are on average 3.4% cleaner in terms of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions intensity than their domestically funded counterparts, with an effect that varies by foreign country, from 8.9% cleaner (South Korea) to 2.0% dirtier (Russia). Better technology (heat rate) explains 96% of this improved environmental performance, while cleaner coal (emission factor) explains the remaining 4%. The environmental performance of foreign-funded coal power plants has only a negligible spillover effect on the performance of domestically funded plants. Although foreign investment slightly reduces CO2 emissions per unit of electricity, overall, it increases global reliance on coal, thus undermining global ambitions to curb greenhouse gases.