Developing Asia will need to spend an additional $300 billion per year on clean-energy infrastructure through 2050 to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement on climate change, the Asian Development Bank said in a report Tuesday. However, the report finds, the region has more to gain. “This is a substantial sum but the economic returns from adopting low-carbon policies needed to mitigate the increasingly devastating impacts of climate change far outweigh the costs,” Juzhong Zhuang, ADB’s deputy chief economist, said in a press release. “ADB estimates that the region can generate more than $2 in gains for each $1 of cost it bears to reach the Paris goal—if the right steps are taken.”
If these 45 developing economies do not act on climate change, they could lose more than 10 percent of their gross domestic product by 2100, according to the release. “Climate mitigation not only helps avoid such GDP losses, it brings many other benefits,” the release says. “[A]ctions to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius can lead to improved air quality that helps to avoid nearly 600,000 premature deaths a year in the region than under business-as-usual.”
