Greening the one belt and one road initiative

Abstract

Aiming at investing in infrastructure far across the distance and spaces in continents, the One Belt, One Road (OBOR) initiative has the potential to transform transportation, urbanization, trade, and employment from East Asia to Central Asia, Europe, Africa, and beyond. With this initiative, low-income and emerging economies in these regions that have substantial dependencies on primary economic activities are likely to experience massive urbanization and associated environmental impacts such as unwanted immigration, regional air/water pollution, and carbon emissions. In the long term, negative unforeseen consequences to local and global environments can severely undermine the credibility of the OBOR and its participating countries. In the paper, we focus specifically on the energy sector, using the Port of Baku in Azerbaijan as a case study, to demonstrate the impact of greening infrastructure investments in the OBOR. After presenting the business as usual scenario for future energy consumption in the Port of Baku, namely using fossil fuel to power the Port, we present a port-greening scenario, namely using wind energy to power the Port. The results show that if a small portion of funds, namely 5% of total investment, is added on the top of total capital investment budget for new renewable energy investments, the Port will become green, and each dollar of the marginal greening investment can lead to 424 kg of carbon dioxide (CO2) reduction. If the case is applicable to 10% of infrastructure investments under the OBOR, a total of $20 billion is needed, and the marginal investments will likely mitigate a total of 8.48 billion tonnes of CO2.