The Global Development Policy Center at Boston University published in November 2023 a policy brief titled "Green Horizons? China's Global Energy Finance in 2022" by Cecilia Springer, Ishana Ratan, Yudong Nathan Liu, and Jia Gu.
From 2000-2022, the China Development Bank and China Export-Import Bank provided 331 loans totaling $225 billion for 65 public borrowers for energy projects around the world. 2022 marked the second year in a row that China's development finance institutions did not issue new loan commitments for the overseas energy sector.
Despite the decline since 2016 in loan commitments and size, the amount of energy finance China provided surpassed the energy sector lending offered to public entities by any other global lender. The largest share of existing loan commitments by China has been to exploration and extraction projects in the energy sector.
Power generation received the second largest amount of lending commitments across energy subsectors. In terms of energy source, fossil fuels received the most support with coal, oil, and gas representing 73 percent of the lending. Oil was the largest energy source by amount of finance, followed by gas and liquefied natural gas.
China's commitments to stepping up support for green and low-carbon energy have yet to emerge in the form of development finance.
