Including in 3 Arab countries. Where are the Chinese-funded coal plants in Africa?

Dubai, United Arab Emirates (CNN) – In July last year, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged countries to stop funding the coal industry, as he said via video link during of a summit organized by the International Energy Agency via the Internet: “Coal has no money. A place in coronavirus recovery plans.”

Last September, Chinese President Xi Jinping promised that the world’s largest greenhouse gas polluter would become carbon neutral by 2060. In his speech to the United Nations General Assembly in New York, he called to a “green revolution”.

It was the first time that China announced concrete targets to achieve net zero carbon emissions.

And in 2018, President Xi announced a major boost for green development in Africa as part of his global infrastructure policy, the Belt and Road Initiative, to which 38 sub-Saharan countries have joined, in the hope to improve infrastructure and develop energy.

However, despite promises to phase out polluting, high-carbon projects inside and outside the country, Chinese banks and companies are still funding 7 coal-fired power plants in Africa today, along with 13 others. plants under construction, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa. The China-Africa Development Fund was supposed to finance Ghana’s coal-fired power plant, a private equity fund fully backed by the China Development Bank, as well as a government political bank.

Since 2000, the China Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank of China have provided $ 6.5 billion to finance coal projects in Africa, according to the Center for Global Development Policy at Boston University.

China has a rapidly developing economy with many sectors dependent on fossil fuels and currently contributing 26% of global carbon emissions, according to the Belt and Road Initiative Center.

In October, a month after Xi pledged to achieve zero carbon emissions, one of China’s largest energy companies, state-owned Power China Corporation, relocated 223 Chinese employees to Zimbabwe to “speed up »The expansion of the Hwang power station. Charcoal in western Zimbabwe.

Two weeks later, Chinese Ambassador to the country Gu Shaochun said in a tweet on Twitter that the coronavirus pandemic “cannot stop the pace of cooperation between China and Zimbabwe” and that at the end of the project, “the country’s energy self-sufficiency capacity will be greatly improved.”

In the infographic above, here’s a look at China’s funded coal plants in Africa: