Japan Zoominar @ UC San Diego: "Asia's Long Exit from Overseas Coal Financing" with Toshiyuki Sakamoto and Michael Davidson, moderated by Ulrike Schaede

Wednesday, November 17, 2021, 9:30am-10:30am JST / Tuesday, November 16, 2021, 4:30pm-5:30pm Pacific

The expansion of coal power conflicts with global climate change mitigation goals. Pressure has mounted in recent years not only on the builders and operators of coal-powered plants, but also on those that finance such endeavors. The three remaining public financiers of overseas coal projects are all in Asia: China, Japan, and South Korea. It is estimated thatsince 2010 these three counties had furnished $73 billion in loans to build overseas coal-power plants.However, their governments have now made commitments to phase out their overseas lending for coal. Why have they chosen to do so, and how will this affect the energy futures in countries that have historically relied on this finance?
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Toshiyuki Sakamoto, Board Member, Director, The Institute of Energy Economics, Japan or IEEJ
Mr. Sakamoto served as a Japanese government official at Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) for 30 years. During that period,he mainly dealt with energy and climate policies in Japan and abroad. He now takes a managerial position at the Institute of Energy Economics, Japan (IEEJ) after working at two private companies related to energy.

Michael Davidson, Assistant Professor, GPS and Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, UCSD
Michael Davidson is an assistant professor joint in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California, San Diego. He researches institutional conflicts and engineering implications inherent in the low-carbon energy transitions in Asia and the U.S.

Ulrike Schaede is Professor of Japanese Business at GPS, UC San Diego, and the Director of JFIT. Her 2020 book "The Business Reinvention of Japan" analyzes how Japanese companies are responding to the rise of China and the changing global competition, and recently won two prestigious awards: the 2020 Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Prize and a silver medal in the Axiom Business Book Awards 2021, "Economics" category.

Register: https://bit.ly/3CxwAjG
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Coming up next,
12/1 (11/30 Pacific): Women in Japanese Science, Business, and Politics, with Yuko Harayama

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