Since 2013, China has been trying to make cities like Beijing more flood-proof by replacing roads, pavements and rooftops with natural materials like soil that soak up water and by giving more space to water bodies like lakes to absorb stormwater.

But despite these measures, massive amounts of rainfall in recent weeks caused floods which killed at least 33 people, destroyed tens of thousands of homes and shut down the Chinese capital’s second busiest airport.

Experts told Climate Home the flooding shows the limited progress China has made on its plan to invest $1 trillion into sponge cities by 2030 – with the city still largely concrete.

Sponge airport overwhelmed

Even new infrastructure, build with the sponge city concept in mind, could not cope with the rains.

Daxing airport opened a few months before the Covid-19 pandemic. Its builders described it as a “sponge airport” as it was equipped with plants on its roof, a huge wetland and an artificial lake the size of over 1,000 Olympic swimming pools.

Despite these measures, the runways flooded on July 30 and it had to cancel over 50 flights.

Floods engulf Beijing Daxing Airport, halting flightshttps://www.yenisafak.com/en/video-gallery/news/floods-engulf-beijing-daxing-airport-halting-flights-3668129 pic.twitter.com/YabfuQbC9Y

— Yeni Şafak English (@yenisafakEN) August 2, 2023

Waters diverted

The government tried to collect the rain in 155 reservoirs in the Hai River Basin, but the measure proved ineffective in controlling the deluge.

About 50 years ago, the basin –a natural sponge–was locked with embankments and reservoirs to manage the water flow.

In recent years though, these structures have made flooding worse as climate change has increased the frequency and intensity of extreme rainfall. These structures lead to overflow, collapse and the authorities have blown them up to ease flooding.

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Reuters reported that flood waters locked in reservoirs were diverted to low-lying populated land in Zhuozhuo, a small city around 80km from Beijing, to flush out the stormwater from the country’s national capital.

Residents of Zhuozhou were angry at the government’s response, Reuters reported. The government reacted by shutting down criticism on social media.

More work needed

Experts argued that these problems show that, rather than abandoning the sponge city project, China and Beijing need to double down and make them better.

Kongjian Yu is the founder of Turenscape, a company involved in the project. He said that just “maybe 1% or 10%” of the city has been converted to a sponge city.

The government’s target is 20% by 2030. “We have a long way to go,” he said.

Yu added that sponge cities are worth doing not just because they control floods but for managing droughts and refilling groundwater supplies too.

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Tony Wong, professor of sustainable development at Monash University, said that progress was always going to be slow as “it takes a long time and a lot of money” to convert a city like Beijing, with lots of people and concrete buildings crammed into a small area, into a sponge city.

More work is needed, says Wong, because Beijing and many other cities lack effective urban planning, and there is no provision for a safe channeling of extreme floodwater.

“What the city needs is the inclusion of green corridors, just like Singapore – another high-density city- has done to transport excess stormwater into low-lying areas to prevent loss of lives and property.”

If China pulls this off it could become an example for many developing countries with high-density cities struggling to control urban flooding, added Wong.

The post Devastating Beijing floods test China’s ‘sponge cities’ appeared first on Climate Home News.

Concerns were raised because Beijing rapidly accelerated plans for new coal power plants in the second half of last year in a bid to increase its energy security.

According to a report by think-tank E3G, published today, China’s coal project pipeline grew by nearly 50% in the last six months of 2022 taking the total to 250GW. It says developments in China diverge sharply from the rest of the world, where combined coal power plans shrank to 97GW over the same period – the lowest level in modern history.

China is still a global leader in the rollout of renewable energy. The country is adding clean energy projects to the grid almost as fast as the rest of the world combined.

But Leo Roberts from E3G’s coal transition programme believes China’s coal expansion is a “direct threat” to the Paris Agreement goal.

Increasing scale of the challenge

In 2015, nations agreed to pursue efforts to limit global temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. Crossing that threshold would make climate impacts increasingly harmful to people and the entire planet.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) says no new unabated coal-fired power stations can be built if the world wants to reach that goal.

“Every new coal power station that comes online increases the scale of the challenge to decarbonise the global economy,” Roberts told Climate Home News. “China’s coal boom is actually undermining significant progress away from coal in all other parts of the world.”

The rapid expansion of China’s coal power plans comes as Beijing seeks to strengthen its energy security. Geopolitical tensions affecting global energy prices and domestic supply issues have made policymakers reconsider previous intentions.

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At a climate summit in April 2021, China’s president Xi Jinping vowed the country would “strictly control coal-fired power generation projects, and strictly limit the increase in coal consumption”.

At the time his words mirrored the central government’s successful attempts to curb new coal projects. E3G analysis shows that new coal power proposals in China collapsed by 75% between 2015 and July 2022.

China’s rapid U-turn

The recent coal boom has reversed this trend and China is now a clear international outlier. It currently accounts for 72% of total global planned coal capacity, with India, Turkey and Indonesia following far behind.

The aim of China’s coal push is to prevent a repeat of the power outages that affected homes and industries last year. Heatwaves increased electricity demand for cooling, while drying up water reservoirs necessary for hydropower generation in the country’s southwestern provinces.

Meteorological agencies predict another round of record high temperatures and more droughts this year.

Preventing power outages

Many of the new coal-fired power plants are expected to meet peak summer demand driven by energy-hungry air conditioners, which last year resulted in the highest recorded momentary load.

Lauri Myllyvirta, a lead analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), says solar energy is able to tackle daytime power needs, but meeting night-time peak demand requires a more nuanced approach.

Still, he believes betting on coal is a suboptimal and costly strategy. “Building coal power capacity to cover peak demand just some days or weeks per year is very expensive. There is still a lot of potential to deal with peak loads with better grid management."

E3G’s Roberts said it looks as if the Chinese government’s claim that it is new building coal capacity to support peak demand is being used as a cover to push through projects. “The reality is that most of the permits handed to new coal power stations would allow them to provide baseload power, which slows down the transition from coal-to-clean."

The post Chinese coal boom a ‘direct threat’ to 1.5C goal, analysts warn appeared first on Climate Home News.

“That’s how the new year began for more than 25,000 residents of the locality and me,” Parmar told Climate Home.

The Chamoli District Administration has declared 723 houses have cracks in them.

Fearing the sudden collapse of residential buildings and hotels, the government has declared the area a landslide subsidence zone. Families are being shifted to hotels, guest houses and government facilities.

Hydropower in the Himalayas

Joshimath was a disaster waiting to happen, says Anjal Prakash, a research director at the Indian School of Business who worked on a Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on the earth’s water and ice .

He said there are a number of reasons for the sinking, including the building of the Tapovan Vishnugad Hydropower Plant and the location of Joshimath on unstable glacier debris.

“The hydropower project’s tunnelling process that involved blasts punctured one of the underground reservoirs of water, known as aquifers, and gushing water destabilised houses,” said Prakash.

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He said locals had complained over the last few months about water sources, especially spring water sources, drying up whenever hydropower construction began in the area.

“Since tunnelling work disturbed aquifers, it also affected the water sources connected to it above the ground. It’s a simple logic,” Prakash said.

Going by residents’ complaints, aquifers must have started getting damaged three to four months before the houses started developing cracks, he estimated.

Building work on the same hydropower plant punctured an aquifer in 2009, leading to groundwater loss.

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The government has stopped the construction work of the hydropower project. But the state-owned National Thermal Power Corporation, which is constructing the plant, denied that its project is sinking houses in Joshimath.

“No tunnels pass underneath Joshimath, and no blasts were carried out recently,” the power company said in a brief press statement released on January 5.

The company has so far ignored calls for an independent probe or a study to ascertain the possibility of its hydropower tunnelling work causing cracks.

Warnings ignored

Scientists and engineers have long warned against development in this region.

In 1976, the Mishra Committee set up to probe the sinking of Joshimath town recommended a ban on heavy construction work in the area.

In 2010, two academics wrote an article headlined “disaster looms large over Joshimath”. They warned that “sudden outpouring of water from an aquifer will have multifarious impacts”.

In 2021, the hydropower plant itself was damaged when a glacier broke off, sending a wall of water and rocks down a mountain and  killing more than 200 people.

The Tapovan Visnugad hydroelectric power plant after it was damaged in 2021 (Photo: Irfan Rashid, Department of Geoinformatics, University of Kashmir)

In April 2022, a multi-agency report on this disaster recommended that there should be mandatory disaster impact assesments for hydropower projects, which are checked periodically.

Prakash said the government should develop other zero-carbon electricity sources like solar power or small-scale hydropower.

Hydropower plants (blue) are common in the Indian Himalayan states of Uttarkhand and Himachal Pradesh and in the neighbouring nation of Nepal. Coal is in black. (Photo: ResourceWatch)

Unrest and anger

Facing bitter cold and fearing the collapse of their homes, residents continuously protest against the government’s failure to announce short-term and long-term plans for the sinking town.

“[The government] have shifted us to a tiny hotel room, which is inadequate for my family of four, which includes two teenagers,” laments Parmar, a farmer by profession. “My two-floor home measures around 6,000 sq ft.”

Activists in Joshimath are urging the local administration to formulate a compensation package for people whose houses would be demolished.

People are getting restless as the district administration has failed to come up with a detailed plan to relocate affected families, says Atul Sati, a local activist.

“They are disrupting traffic, protesting and not letting disaster management teams demolish infrastructures that can collapse anytime,” he said. The government should provide monetary compensation and a plan for settlement before the situation becomes explosive.”

He added: “There should be an investigation into the role of NTPC’s project in the Joshimath tragedy. And policy makers and engineers who have put people’s lives in danger should be held accountable for their actions.”

The post Sinking town exposes perils of Himalayan hydropower appeared first on Climate Home News.

The 15 creatures trekked for more than 500 kilometres from March 2020 to September 2021, giving birth to two calves along the way.

On social media, their images and videos went viral. Users romanticized their ordeal and gushed over the “cute” explorers. Reporters framed the unusual dispersal as a mystery.

“These wandering elephants may look cute, but they were in a complex situation,” says Jack O’Connor, lead author of the UN University’s second Interconnected Disaster Risks report. It elaborates on the crisis behind their unusual journey.

The report released on Wednesday lists 10 disasters including Taiwan drought, vanishing vaquita and Tonga eruption, to explain how the root causes are connected and explore solutions.

In the case of the wandering elephants, they identified gaps in conservation and biodiversity practices region and globally, says O’Connor. “Maximizing the number of animals without the right conservation approach triggered human-animal conflict and crisis inside the reserve.”

More elephants, less habitat

The elephants’ journey began in their natural habitat at Xishuangbanna National Nature Reserve in Yunnan, southern China.

In March 2020, the reserve was facing extreme drought, possibly causing food and water shortages for elephants. The country’s conservation policies focused on boosting the elephant population inside the reserve, which ballooned from 100 in the 1970s to around 300 in 2020.

But their habitat in southern China kept shrinking. Elephants lost 62% of the areas in just three decades due to expanding human settlements and rubber or tea plantations. As a result, they were left with less than 4% of the reserve’s area remaining suitable for their habitat, says the report.

The crisis had been showing its impact for more than two decades, with human-animal conflict intensifying. Since 1991, more than 60 people have been killed during encounters with Asian elephants in Xishuangbanna, with 12 deaths recorded in 2019 alone.

“Some stretches inside the reserve were growing into a state that was fairly densely packed with trees. Elephants couldn’t use this area because they were not able to cross through them,” says O’Connor. “The conservation approach is too simplistic and based on quantity rather than quality.”

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Another herd from the same reserve wandered towards a botanical garden, miles away from the urban areas, at around the same time. Their adventure got less public attention.

Two herds of elephants escaping the reserve underlined the dire situation, says conservationist Becky Shu Chen. For many Chinese people, it was the first time they had come into contact with these giant animals.

“Culturally, wildlife, in general, is romanticised and personified, but genuine awe and comprehension of the wildness of nature are missing in China,” she adds.

Long road to Cop15

Such romanticising of wild animals is promoted by the Chinese government. In Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, visitors can cuddle a panda, a vulnerable animal that came close to extinction a few decades back. At Harbin Siberian Tiger Park, tourists can feed the tigers – to the extent that the big cats became obese.

Tourists are rarely told about the threats these iconic animals face, or what they can do to help.

“My doctoral program about conservation communication shows that the most awareness-raising campaigns only provide information and don’t lead to any doable action,” says Shu Chen.

The elephants ended up in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan. Ironically, this is where ministers met on 12-13 October 2021 and agreed to develop an international deal to reverse biodiversity loss. The summit’s venue displayed a sculpture of 15 wandering elephants, to represent what they were trying to protect.

Yet talks on the nature pact have been repeatedly postponed, with ambition hampered by a lack of resources. The Cop15 summit was relocated from Kunming to Montreal, Canada, where a deal is due to be finalised in December.

The herd caused damage worth $1 million on its journey. More than 25,000 people got involved in tackling the chaos.

To prevent a repeat, the UN report recommends expanding the habitat, connecting protected areas and building a natural barrier to prevent elephants from venturing out of the reserve.

“As a local wildlife organization, we have also made a similar recommendation to connect the fragmented elephant range to ease human-elephant conflict,” says Jinfeng Zhou, secretary-general of Beijing-based China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation.

The post Mystery solved: Chinese elephant trek exposes conservation failures appeared first on Climate Home News.

Hundreds of industries including component suppliers for Toyota, Foxconn and Tesla closed for six days last week. Next, provincial authorities restricted household electricity use.

Drying up the rivers and reservoirs are the heatwaves that began in mid-June and continue to sweep through southern China. Such a prolonged period of heatwave stretching for more than 60 days is happening for the first time since 1961, ramping up household demand for electricity.

“The extreme long lasting heatwaves have driven up cooling demand by 20% combined with low hydropower output due to 50% lower than normal precipitation,” said Yan Qin, an analyst with Refinitiv.

Temperatures have reached 40C in more than 10 provinces, including Sichuan, Henan, Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Anhui. In a few places, the mercury touched 45C.

Sichuan, China’s largest and most reliable hydropower producer, with around 90 GW of installed hydropower capacity, fulfills 80% of the province’s power demand. It also supplied uninterrupted power when the country faced a coal shortage last year that caused outages in a few provinces.

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This year’s hydropower shortage might prompt the government to rethink its energy policy. With a 16% share in the country’s energy mix, hydropower is a crucial pillar in China’s efforts to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060. In response to the latest crunch, the government is boosting coal generation as an alternative.

The crisis hasn’t come without warning. “We had predicted that climate change, in the current case, causing an extreme weather event, will affect hydropower potential in China,” Qiuhong Tang, a Chinese Academy of Sciences professor, told Climate Home.

Tang and his colleagues, in a study in 2016, estimated that climate change could reduce hydropower potential by 2% in China during 2020-2070. “But in Sichuan, the loss would be up to 10%.”

Rising temperatures are changing rainfall and evaporation patterns in China. As a result, models project a decrease in annual average runoff for most river basins, particularly in the southern areas.

In the recent weeks, “the heatwave also led to fast evaporation of the river and reservoirs,” Qin added, leading to a sharp drop in water levels.

Can China capture excess rainwater during March-June in its dams to generate hydropower in the lean season? Even if the country stores the excess water during the wet season and transfers it for the dry season, said another study, hydropower generation in the Yalong basin “would be reduced by 4 to 6% compared to the baseline period”.

“This change will largely affect the energy generation in Chongqing and Sichuan, which rely heavily on the Yalong River for hydropower generation,” said the authors.

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Urgent adaptation measures are required to deal with the loss of hydropower potential, Tang added. “Government needs to engage more climate scientists and policymakers to deal with the situation, else a source of clean energy that could help the country meet its climate goals will face serious loss.”

“For hydropower, storage management is crucial. Store water when demand is low and generate power from it when demand is high. Climate change affects both electricity demand and inflow into the reservoirs, potentially creating a demand and supply gap,” said Nathalie Voisin, Chief Scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, US.

“In some regions, inflows are happening earlier than before, which might be difficult to store until the peak summer months, cascading a water crisis into a power crisis,” she said.

Weather data shows the flood season in southern China began two weeks earlier than usual, and average rainfall hit levels that have not been seen since 1961. And when the heatwave began in mid-June, the water level in Sichuan’s reservoirs started declining, unable to meet the peak summer demand.

“Climate change is challenging hydropower reservoir management worldwide,” added Voisin.

Meanwhile, companies facing significant production losses due to frequent lockdowns imposed as a part of China’s zero-covid-19 policy are getting desperate. Shanghai officials sought priority power access for Tesla suppliers in Sichuan province, sparking a backlash on social media from residents suffering from the power outages.

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The project uses methane released during the coal mining operation to generate 120MW of electricity. Since 60% of this coal gas has a concentration of 3-8% methane, it makes these sort of initiatives profitable.

“The challenge is to deal with the remaining 40% of low methane concentration coal gas,” said Yang Fuqiang, a senior researcher at Climate Change and Energy Transition Programme at Peking University in Beijing.

China’s energy sector, driven by its coal operations, accounted for a fifth of total methane emissions from the global energy sector last year – making it, by far, the largest methane emitter.

The government has introduced strong policies to prevent the direct release of methane into the atmosphere. But it is struggling to motivate coal mining giants to initiate methane mitigation projects.

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In 2008, China made it mandatory for coal mining companies to capture and utilise coal mine methane above 30% concentration.

Companies that cannot capture high-density methane from coal have to flare the gas to prevent its release into the atmosphere. The government further introduced incentives for methane recovery.

But industry insiders say that a lack of monitoring of methane emissions coupled with the high cost of capture technologies deter the development of more methane-cutting projects.

Detecting methane emissions requires tracking on the ground and from the sky using drones, planes and satellites. These monitoring systems alone are costly and need huge investment.

“The data uncertainty of methane emissions is a long-existing problem,” said Ran Ze, senior manager at Environmental Defense Fund, China (EDF). “It’s crucial to enhance monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) to detect the exact status of methane emissions.”

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The US-China joint declaration announced at Cop26 in Glasgow, UK and China’s pledge to become carbon neutral by 2060 have prompted policymakers to bolster efforts to capture methane and increase its share in the country’s energy mix.

Cutting methane emissions from the energy sector, which has a warming potential 80 times that of carbon dioxide, is increasingly seen as a quick win. At Cop26, more than 108 countries signed up to reduce its emissions under an initiative launched jointly by the US and the EU.

China stayed away from the initiative but, in its joint declaration with the US, committed to work towards limiting its methane emissions.

According to official data from 2014, the country’s energy sector contributed 24.7 million tonnes or 45% of national methane emissions. Coal mines alone were responsible for around 38% of emissions – unlike in the US and the EU where a majority of methane emissions come from gas pipelines.

“If China wants to tap the potential of methane and curb its emissions, then undoubtedly coal mines are a priority area,” said Yang.

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China is expected to release a national action plan for cutting methane emissions ahead of the Cop27 climate talks in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, in November.

The success of China’s methane emission reduction policies hinges on a comprehensive approach.

Besides monitoring, coal mining companies will need cost-effective technologies for methane mitigation, according to EDF. There are ways to recover coal mine methane with a concentration as low as 0.5%, but they are expensive.

And with China planning to drastically cut down coal extraction as a part of its pledge to become carbon neutral by 2060, mining companies only have 38 years to recover their cost from investments.

While the government is likely to invest in methane monitoring, reporting and verification, mining companies will face the uphill task of finding low-cost methane mitigation technology.

“Methane concentration varies in coal mines here,” said Meian Chen, programme director at innovative Green Development Program, Beijing.  “For this, there will be a need for a tailored approach, using cost-effective technologies and policy support, to capture methane from these mines.”

The post China’s coal miners face a challenge to capture leaked methane appeared first on Climate Home News.

The 30-year-old activist with the People’s Health Movement was particularly alarmed during the deadly second wave of the coronavirus pandemic, when the Indian capital’s hospitals were overwhelmed and she had symptoms resembling Covid-19 infection.

Kakkar was able to escape to the relatively fresh air of her hometown Kasauli, in the foothills of the Himalayas, as her company allowed her to work from home. Now, she is back in the office and back in Delhi, where the pollution is bad enough officials recently considered – but rejected – a temporary full lockdown to clear the air.

“I am taking a lot of precautions such as wearing masks to keep my lungs safe, an impossible task in this acute pollution,” says Kakkar.

In the last two weeks, the air quality in most parts of the city ranged from severe to poor. The air quality index recorded PM2.5 levels in the range of 290 to 400 parts per million, nearly 10 to 15 times the World Health Organization safe limit. Research links exposure to a high concentration of fine particulates to breathing and heart problems.

With about 20 million residents in and around Delhi struggling to breathe, India’s highest court is weighing in. Judges directed the government to convene an emergency meeting to improve the air quality.

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Officials took steps to restrict construction work, industrial activities and the entry of trucks into the city, bringing limited short term relief. A longer term solution needs to address the city’s reliance on fossil fuels for transport, power and industry, and the seasonal impact of crop stubble burning to clear fields in neighbouring states.

In a Supreme Court hearing on 29 November, the government accepted that a serious overhaul of industry and transport in the city would be needed to tackle the pollution crisis. For example, officials said the bus fleet should be scaled up from 3,000 to 11,000 to reduce reliance on cars and motorbikes. Concerns were also raised on coal-fired power plants and monitoring of clean fuel used by industries.

“Lockdown in Delhi could have helped bring down the pollution level as transportation contributes around 51% to the city’s total emissions,” Avikal Somvanshi, programme manager, clean air campaign at the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), told Climate Home.

“Controlling vehicular emissions can help; however, the issue cannot be resolved immediately. It will take a few years as the city implements policy on efficient engines and clean fuels,” said Dr Anju Goel, a climate change expert at think-tank The Energy and Resources Institute (Teri).

Even more challenging is coordinating action with Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, where farming practices are behind a seasonal spike in pollution. The court observed that crop stubble burning contributes only 4% of annual air pollution in Delhi, with its concentration spiraling to 36% during peak winter pollution in November.

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Delhi has been reeling under severe winter pollution for decades, and since record taking started in 2016, not much has changed. None of these states are eager to prepare a regional plan to tackle emissions.

“Such a plan will not only improve air quality but also reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, including methane, carbon dioxide – and imagine its positive impact on people’s health,” Somvanshi added.

In India, biomass burning happens almost throughout the year. About 5% of the biomass fires come from farmland and 14% from forest fires. While forest fires occur before monsoon months, residual crop burning occurs mainly in the Indo-Gangetic plains during winter.

“If we can control air pollution, then we also solve the climate crisis to a certain extent. But for farmers, crop stubble burning is a matter of their livelihood. So they need affordable alternatives to make a shift,” said Goel. “This is where things get difficult.”

Farmers in Punjab – the breadbasket of India – burn crop stubble as it’s an affordable and fast way to prepare the land for the next crop. The state government has offered subsidized machines, organic methods to convert crop waste into fertilizers, and financial incentives not to burn crop stubble. But these incentives have failed to solve the issue.

The Supreme Court is continuing to monitor government measures to tackle air pollution. The next hearing is on 2 December.

The post As Delhi chokes, India’s supreme court is grappling with the air pollution crisis appeared first on Climate Home News.

The EU is urging the Beijing-based multilateral development bank, which has 103 member countries, to end finance for methane gas projects and avoid locking in further greenhouse gas emissions.

But demand for gas is soaring in southeast Asia and Asia, with many countries seeing it as a “transition fuel” away from coal.

“Our energy policy is up for review. Some of our board members feel that we should avoid gas totally, but some countries still demand funds for it,” AIIB vice president and chief investment officer D J Pandian told Climate Home News. “European countries want us to stop investing in such projects.”

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In recent years, Asian countries have seen gas as a cleaner alternative to coal, as it emits less carbon dioxide when burned. Analysts at Wood Mackenzie forecast Asia will account for 60% of the global gas demand increase between 2020 and 2050.

The novel coronavirus pandemic has further strengthened the demand for gas in Asia, with LNG imports shooting up by 6 Mt in 2020.

China and India have plans to increase the share of natural gas in their primary energy mix 12% and 15% by 2030, respectively. Under such a scenario, ending finance to new gas projects could strip the bank of an investment opportunity.

AIIB, known for its “lean, clean and green” slogan, has disbursed $5 billion in loans for energy-related projects, with the biggest share of $2bn (42%) allocated to gas transmission and distribution projects and $180m (4%) for gas-fired power plants.

Only 25% of the budget was invested in renewable energy projects. The bank has not funded any coal-fired power plants.

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“Southeast Asia and Asian countries haven’t even transitioned into natural gas, and there is already a pressure to pull out from it. At present, renewables are cheap in India; hydrogen is not,” said Hemant Mallya, senior program lead, New Delhi-based Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW).

If the gas is squeezed out from the energy mix, he warned, governments could revert to coal. China is still building new coal power plants, for example, with a typical life span of 30-40 years. And China ramped up coal mining to generate more electricity in provinces facing power shortages in recent months.

Some of AIIB’s gas project investments, such as $500 million to support the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Low Carbon Energy Transition and Air Quality Improvement Project, claim to have reduced toxic air pollution in parts of the country.

“Right now, developing countries are not at a stage to phase out natural gas from their energy mix, and pressure from the EU to do so sounds unjustified,” added Mallya. “It’s a dichotomy that EU, which is supporting a gas pipeline in their region, is opposing natural gas investment in other parts of the world.”

The AIIB has invested $600 million into the 1,850 km Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline, part of the $40 billion Southern Gas Corridor built to transport gas supplies Azerbaijan to the EU. The pipeline will reduce the bloc’s reliance on Russia for gas supply.

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But Bruce Robertson, energy finance analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (Ieefa), said gas is expensive, polluting and should not be seen as a transition fuel for developing countries.

“The natural gas is problematic and very expensive fuel for generating power and doesn’t suit the needs of the third world power source,” he said. Renewable energy is much cheaper if the developing countries get the right grid infrastructure in place, he said.

According to Ieefa, the way forward would be eliminating financial incentives for fossil fuels and preventing transmission losses of energy produced by renewables by constructing smart grids and ultra-high transmission lines.

While gas is cleaner burning than coal, there is increasing awareness that methane leakage when gas is produced and transported drive further global heating.

Data analysis by the International Energy Agency shows the gas sector is responsible for 45Mt of methane emissions globally, with 39Mt coming from coal and 39Mt from oil.

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A rise in methane emissions has prompted more than 100 countries to sign an agreement led by the US and EU at Cop26 in Glasgow. These countries pledged to reduce methane emissions 30% by 2030, with a focus on the oil and gas sector.

Among the top ten methane emitters, India, China, Iran, and Russia did not join the pact.

“China and India are rapidly expanding in terms of electricity demand, so they don’t want to reduce any energy source,” said Robertson. “But the world has to phase out gas soon to meet international climate targets.”

The AIIB is not yet ready to end gas finance, Pandian said: “We cannot neglect gas totally…

“For now, we will definitely increase our funding for renewable energy to assist governments’ transition to clean fuel.”

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