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Carbon dioxide emissions from global overseas coal-fired power plants

Nature Climate Change (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

Foreign investments in overseas coal-fired power plants (OCPs) largely impede decarbonization efforts, yet their global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions have not been sufficiently quantified. Here we analyse investment data from 908 OCPs worldwide, and then reveal current annual emissions of 0.53 GtCO2 yr−1 and a historical cumulative total of 26 GtCO2. Developed nations account for 78% of these cumulative emissions on the basis of investments, while emissions from developing nations have surged from 8% in 1960 to 39% in 2022. Assuming unchanged policies and technologies, OCPs are projected to contribute an additional 15–30 GtCO2 in cumulative emissions by 2060 directly. Furthermore, they could stimulate local coal power growth in emerging economies, potentially adding 6.3–45.0 GtCO2 emissions indirectly. Our study underscores the critical importance of low-carbon policy interventions in emerging countries to curb the power-sector carbon emissions increasingly influenced by international capital.

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Fig. 1: The spatial distribution and investment flows of global OCPs.
Fig. 2: Temporal trends of CO2 emissions from OCPs.
Fig. 3: Disparities in the HR, capacity size and operational lifetime of OCPs funded by developed and developing countries.
Fig. 4: Future projections of CO2 emissions from overseas coal-fired plants (OCPs).

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Data availability

Information on the scale, technology types and investors of global coal-fired power plants can be found at the Global Coal Plant Tracker project by Global Energy Monitor: https://globalenergymonitor.org/projects/global-coal-plant-tracker/. Data on the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) Restrictiveness Index are available from the OECD’s official site: https://data.oecd.org/fdi/fdi-restrictiveness.htm#indicator-chart. Details on the shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs) scenarios can be accessed at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) SSP Database webpage: https://tntcat.iiasa.ac.at/SspDb/dsd?Action=htmlpage&page=welcome. Information on the APS and STEPS scenarios comes from the World Energy Outlook 2023 extended dataset provided by the International Energy Agency (IEA): https://tntcat.iiasa.ac.at/SspDb/dsd?Action=htmlpage&page=welcome. Source data for overseas coal-fired power plants (OCPs) are accessible on Open Science Framework: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/UC9RE (ref. 59).

Code availability

MATLAB R2020b was used for overseas coal-fired power plants (OCPs) and for data analysis. The analysis for the synthetic difference In differences (SDID) is conducted using R version 4.3.1. The source codes utilized in this study can be accessed on Open Science Framework: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/UC9RE (ref. 59).

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Acknowledgements

This research is supported by Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China (2023YFE0112900), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (42192511, 41991312, 41821005, 42077328 and 41830641), the Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Precision Measurement and Early Warning Technology for Urban Environmental Health Risks (ZDSYS20220606100604008), Shenzhen Science and Technology Program (JCYJ20220818100611024), Department of Science and Technology of Guangdong Province (2021B1212050024), Department of Education of Guangdong Province (2021KCXTD004), High level of special funds (G03050K001 and G030290001), and Center for Computational Science and Engineering at Southern University of Science and Technology.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Guangdong Provincial Observation and Research Station for Coastal Atmosphere and Climate of the Greater Bay Area, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China

    Peng Guo, Huizhong Shen, Yilin Chen, Zelin Mai, Ruibin Xu, Ruixin Zhang, Zhanxiang Wang, Jinling He, Lianming Zheng, Chen Wang, Jianhuai Ye, Lei Zhu, Tzung-May Fu, Xin Yang & Shu Tao

  2. Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Precision Measurement and Early Warning Technology for Urban Environmental Health Risks, School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China

    Peng Guo, Huizhong Shen, Yilin Chen, Zelin Mai, Ruibin Xu, Ruixin Zhang, Zhanxiang Wang, Jinling He, Lianming Zheng, Chen Wang, Jianhuai Ye, Lei Zhu, Tzung-May Fu, Xin Yang & Shu Tao

  3. School of Urban Planning and Design, Peking University Shenzhen Graduate School, Shenzhen, China

    Yilin Chen

  4. College of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Peking University, Beijing, China

    Hancheng Dai

  5. Centre for Sustainable Medicine, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Republic of Singapore

    Haitong Zhe Sun

  6. Centre for Atmospheric Science, Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Haitong Zhe Sun

  7. Business School, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China

    Kainan Ke & Albert Tsang

  8. The Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction, University College London, London, UK

    Jing Meng

  9. Institute of Carbon Neutrality, Laboratory for Earth Surface Processes, College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China

    Maodian Liu, Jin Li, Wulahati Adalibieke, Guofeng Shen & Shu Tao

  10. School of the Environment, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    Maodian Liu

  11. School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Armistead G. Russell

  12. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, USA

    Charles T. Driscoll

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Contributions

P.G., H.S., H.D. and S.T. conceived the initial framework. P.G., Z.M., R.X., R.Z., Z.W. and J.H. were involved in data collection and cleaning. P.G., Z.M., L.Z., J.L. and W.A. performed the modelling, wrote the codes and carried out the analysis. H.S. and S.T. supervised and coordinated the overall research. P.G., H.S. and Y.C. drafted the manuscript with H.Z.S., K.K., J.M., M.L., C.W., J.Y., L.Z., G.S., T.-M.F., A.T., X.Y., A.G.R., C.T.D. and S.T. contributing to the writing, revisions and editing.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Huizhong Shen.

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Nature Climate Change thanks Ajay Nagpur, Moritz Schwarz and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–23, Tables 1–10 and Texts 1–9.

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Supplementary Data 1–6

Supplementary data contain OCP CO2 emissions, CP CO2 emissions, OCP parameters, CP parameters, combustion technology and coal type.

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Guo, P., Shen, H., Chen, Y. et al. Carbon dioxide emissions from global overseas coal-fired power plants. Nat. Clim. Chang. (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-024-02114-y

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