By Shayak Sengupta and Abhinav Jindal
As the world gathers once again for global climate talks at COP28 in Dubai, several outstanding priorities will hang over negotiators. Chief among them will be the issue of climate finance. In 2022, richer countries barely fulfilled the $100 billion they promised to poorer countries each year to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and guard against the worst impacts of a warmer world.
A bright spot in this financing gap has been the emergence of Just Energy Transition Partnerships (JETP), a series of climate finance deals in the works between the G-7 and several developing countries: South Africa, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Senegal. The agreements are in various stages, with political declarations and investment plans released as negotiations progress. The exact terms of the deals vary, but they include a combination of loans and promises of private finance to fund clean energy projects, retrain fossil fuel sector workers for employment in other sectors, and most visibly, retire coal power plants.
Conspicuously absent has been a deal with India, arguably the crown jewel in these efforts to finance greenhouse gas emissions reductions in developing countries. The country ranks third in global emissions, and about 70 percent of its electricity production (also the world’s third-largest) is powered by coal. Coal electricity capacity in India outnumbers that in South Africa, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Senegal combined, exceeding that of every country but China.
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