China's Development Finance in the Global Energy Sector

The Global Economic Governance Initiative (GEGI) at Boston University published a paper in 2016 titled "Fueling Growth and Financing Risk: The Benefits and Risks of China's Development Finance in the Global Energy Sector" by Kevin P. Gallagher, Rohini Kamal, Yongzhong Wang, and Yanning Chen.

The paper provides estimates of China's global developmental finance institutions and its policy bank lending to foreign governments for energy. China is poised to be the largest development lender in the world as Western-backed multilateral development banks appear stalled in their ability to increase their capital bases. While the study looks a China's global energy financing, it contains useful information about energy financing in Africa. Six African countries--Ethiopia, Niger, Sudan, Ghana, Zambia, and Tanzania--are among the 20 top global recipients of Chinese energy finance. Most of the global financing has gone into power generation (80 percent), transmission and distribution (13 percent), and extraction and refining (7 percent). In the case of power generation, 66 percent financed projects in the coal sector, 27 percent hydropower, and the remainder in oil, gas, and wind.

This paper is part of the GEGI interactive database on China's Global Energy Finance.