Gallagher Interviewed on China’s Funding of Foreign Energy Projects
Kevin Gallagher, Professor of Global Development Policy at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, was recently interviewed on China surpassing the West in funding for foreign energy projects.
Gallagher was quoted in a December 15, 2016 article by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation entitled “China Surpasses the West in Funding Foreign Energy Projects.”
From the text of the article:
“China has leapfrogged the world of development finance with an incredible amount of money for energy projects, which developing countries have been calling for, and we applaud that,” said Kevin Gallagher, a professor of global development policy at Boston University who co-authored the study. “The challenge is to direct more of that financing into sustainable energy projects that are socially inclusive and accepted by local communities.”
Gallagher said China’s international energy investments could transform communities in developing countries, but added that there are significant social and environmental costs associated with coal-fired power plants and large hydropower dams.
Collectively, the foreign coal-fired power plants that China financed from 2007–2014 will emit 594 million metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere annually — exceeding the annual CO2 emissions of entire countries, such as Canada, Brazil and the United Kingdom. Gallagher’s team estimated, conservatively, that air pollution from those coal plants will intensify climate change and create health problems and other social costs that amount to $29 billion annually.
You can read the entire article here.
Kevin Gallagher is the co-chair of the Task Force on Regulating Capital Flows and has served as an advisor to the Department of State and the Environmental Protection Agency in the United States, as well as to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. Gallagher has been a visiting or adjunct professor at the School for Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy; El Colegio de Mexico in Mexico; Tsinghua University in China, and the Center for State and Society in Argentina.