Project financing an energy revolution in the USA

Abstract

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has warned that there is significant concern that increasing manmade greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are leading to climate change and global warming. Climate models indicate that to minimize the damage caused by global warming, governments need to limit the global temperature increase to 2°C. This requires stabilizing the concentration of GHGs in the atmosphere to 450 parts per million in carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2e) by 2050. Many countries concur that the level of emissions per citizen for every country should converge by then. This will require the emissions of developed countries to decline by 50–90% by 2050. This paper examines the building and utilities sectors that account for 68% of total US GHG emissions and proposes a potential solution of adopting a carbon tax (revenues) with reinvestment (power plant construction) that reduces US emissions by 48% and building/utility emissions by 67% within 20 years. This paper then examines two potential options using a project (infrastructure) finance approach to either minimize current taxation to ease the economic burden on a slow-growing economy or accelerate emission reductions within the utilities and building sectors. The first model applies limited tax (providing economic stimulus) in years 1–10 and collects the tax from years 11 to 30 (with a peak of 2% of gross domestic product), resulting in the same emission reduction. The second model uses project finance to accelerate spending on infrastructure reducing total emissions by 58% and building/utility emissions by 81% within 20 years, resulting in a 13.2% and 36.1% emission reduction, respectively, over the base model. Due to the limited time frame to reduce emissions and minimize the impact of global warming, all three models are of value to politicians.