Econ Papers Daily / 期刊论文
重新思考碳锁定：东南亚电力系统中的金融与合同驱动因素
Rethinking carbon lock-in: Financial and contractual drivers in Southeast Asian power systems
摘要
What explains Southeast Asia's persistent resistance to decarbonization despite falling renewable costs and growing climate commitments? While existing literature points to carbon lock-in through technological and institutional dynamics, it under-theorizes how financial and contractual arrangements — especially in emerging economies — interact to stabilize and reinforce fossil fuel dependence across contexts. We develop a financial–contractual lock-in framework that conceptualizes how project-level funding structures and long-term contractual commitments aggregate into system-level inertia. Applying this framework across five major Southeast Asian power systems (Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines), we trace how these mechanisms convert private investment protections into public fiscal rigidity, aligning state and investor interests around continued fossil fuel operation. Our findings reveal that the tractability of exit depends on creditor reachability, counterparty coordination, residual financial exposure, and state fiscal or institutional restructuring capacity. Where market liberalization has advanced, lock-in is relocated rather than removed: legacy obligations are socialized through consumer charges rather than the sovereign balance sheet, and renegotiation is complicated by the dispersal of contractual obligations across multiple private counterparties, even as forward-looking fossil investment faces genuine market discipline. Gas risks replicating coal's bankability logic where states extend comparable risk mitigation, making a second generation of lock-in a policy choice rather than an inevitability. The framework offers a transferable diagnostic lens for scholars examining fiscal and legal dimensions of fossil fuel persistence beyond these cases.
中文摘要
尽管可再生能源成本不断下降且气候承诺日益增强，是什么解释了东南亚对脱碳的持续抵制？现有文献指出技术与制度动态导致的碳锁定，但对金融与合同安排——尤其是在新兴经济体中——如何相互作用以在不同情境下稳定并强化化石燃料依赖的理论化不足。我们构建了一个金融—合同锁定框架，将项目层面的融资结构与长期合同承诺如何聚合为系统层面的惯性加以概念化。将该框架应用于东南亚五大电力系统（印度尼西亚、马来西亚、泰国、越南和菲律宾），我们追踪这些机制如何将私人投资保护转化为公共财政刚性，使国家与投资者利益围绕化石燃料的持续运营趋于一致。我们的研究发现表明，退出的可处理性取决于债权人可触及性、交易对手协调、剩余金融敞口以及国家财政或制度重组能力。在市场自由化已推进的地方，锁定是被转移而非消除：遗留义务通过消费者收费而非主权资产负债表被社会化，且重新谈判因合同义务分散于多个私人交易对手而变得复杂，即便前瞻性化石投资面临真正的市场约束。在國家提供可比风险缓释的情况下，天然气风险可能复制煤炭的可融资性逻辑，使第二代锁定成为政策选择而非不可避免。该框架为研究这些案例之外化石燃料持续存在的财政与法律维度的学者提供了一个可迁移的诊断视角。