Yes, we need to migrate from coal fired power to renewables; and yes, Australia, with its wealth and scientific leadership, should be leading the way. But let’s not lose sight of the cost of doing so. Transgrid in Australia is looking to build the 500 kV Humelink interconnector across rural NSW so as to deliver […]

Andrew was recently interviewed by Proximo re Energy Transition Mechanisms i.e. how to finance the early retirement of coal fired power plants and the coal mines which supply them. There is a cost to doing this which needs to be shared around, particularly in Asia where the plant is bigger and younger than in the […]

We all know that there is a gap between how much infrastructure is needed and how much is planned; and that, no matter what your underlying assumptions are, that gap is a very large number. Now, for perhaps the first time, comes an estimate of the cost of not building that infrastructure. And that number […]

I wrote last week on how the pain needed to be shared if we are to migrate the planet away from coal fired power plants. These power plants are predominantly in Asia and predominantly in China and India. Both countries have their own coal to burn but they also import heaps of it, predominantly from […]

Journalist and one – time Bernie Sanders speechwriter David Sirota once said of Barack Obama that he campaigned in climate poetry then governed in fossil fuel prose. On a bigger stage, COP 26 is less than three months away and it is time to move beyond poetic announcements involving eye – catching targets for climate […]

Andrew sat down recently with Enlit Asia’s Melissa Fitzgerald to discuss the new normal facing the financing of the huge investment necessary in the power sector across the region. He has been a member of the advisory board to Enlit Asia (previously PowerGen Asia) since 2009 and Enlit’s upcoming conference is currently scheduled for 28 […]

This in the FT with commentary from Andrew on LinkedIn. A silver lining to Covid has been our taking climate change a whole lot more seriously. Now it gets personal. If anything, this looks quite cautious: what about Hong Kong’s airport or Macau’s casinos?

  This from the Expert Witness Institute.

What can governments in Asia learn from the UK’s various attempts to share with the private sector the costs and risks of running a national rail network? The UK invented railways in 1825; nationalised them in 1948; denationalized them in 1994 -7; and last week published the Williams – Shapps Plan for Rail under which […]

This in the FT with commentary from Andrew on LinkedIn: This is eminently sensible. Money is, after all, fungible. Where ESG finance gets more nuanced is when it funds polluters looking to clean up their act; if they rate poorly and are unable to raise funds elsewhere, lending to them could have more of an […]

Last month it was Suez, this month it’s Istanbul. Suddenly, canals are all the rage. This week, Reuters reported how six Turkish banks, having signed up to the UN – backed Principles for Responsible Banking framework, expressed a distinct lack of enthusiasm for backing the 75 billion Lira ($13 billion) Kanal Istanbul which President Erdogan […]

The enormous increase in lending by China to lower and upper middle – income countries, principally under the banner of its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), has been met by the West with varying degrees of concern not least because so little was known about the terms of that lending. Now the How China Lends […]

Unless you have spent this week quarantining or staycating with no wi-fi, you will have seen that the Suez Canal became blocked when the 20,000 TEU “Ever Given” container ship, leased by Taiwan’s Evergreen from Japan’s Shoei Kisen, turned broadside in a sandstorm, ran aground and blocked the canal. The ship is 400 m long […]

Local businessman Steven Cheung plans to reintroduce seaplanes to Hong Kong. This from TransitJam. It has been tried before; plenty of red tape looms; and eight passengers paying only HK$250 (US$32) sounds almost too good to be true. But apparently he has already raised HK$100 million (US$13 million) and the seaplanes would add a whole new […]