- Even though India’s not opening any new coal-fired power plants at home, India still continues to fund coal plants overseas.
- Nearly 30% of global coal financing was sourced from export-import banks of India.
- Funding coal power plants in other countries poses a financial risk and isn’t strategically sound, according to a finance specialist with SE4ALL.
India is lauded for its aggressive targets to achieve sustainable energy goals — like aiming to generate 175 GigaWatts (GW) of its energy from renewable sources by 2022.
Its policy framework and ambitious targets for sustainable energy made it the top scorer in this year Climatescope (http://global-climatescope.org/assets/data/reports/climatescope2019-report-en.pdf) rankings.
Not only is India working towards bringing in more sources of renewable energy, but it’s also cutting down on fossil fuels. Its existing coal fired power projects are reporting stress and no new financial commitments for coal plants have been made.
“India is reducing its reliable on coal domestically, leading the world in solar PVs. But what it’s still doing, which we find curious, is funding coal projects outside India,” said Olivia Coldrey with SEforALL, an initiative launched by former UN Secretary-General Ban Kimoon
As much as 30% of global coal financing was sourced from Export-Import banks of India. Most of it was for a project in Bangladesh amounting to $1.6 billion, according to data from SEforALL’s Energizing Finance report.
“It (investment in coal energy production) is economically questionable in the sense that we know it’s cheaper in a lot of markets to build a new good connected solar or wind plant from scratch than to operate a fully depreciated coal plant,” Coldrey told Business Insider Read More…
Source: businessinsider.in
