Research On Risk Identification, Assessment And Early Warning Of Energy Investment Projects Along The “Belt And Road??

The areas along the "the Belt and Road" are rich in energy reserves.With the active promotion and in-depth implementation of the "the Belt and Road" initiative,the number of investment projects and the scale of foreign investment by energy enterprises are growing.However,there are many potential risks due to the high capital investment,long construction period and the fact that most countries along the route are politically unstable and economically backward.A comprehensive assessment of energy investment risks along "the Belt and Road" is an important guarantee for the smooth implementation of energy investment.This study is based on the logical line of risk factor identification,risk assessment and risk warning for energy enterprises’ foreign investment.Firstly,we propose the background and significance of the study based on the current situation and research status.Secondly,we obtain the risk factors of energy enterprises’ project investment in the regions along the Belt and Road through LDA thematic model,collect and summarize the problematic project case sets,supplement and improve the risk factors,and construct a risk evaluation index system for energy projects.Then,we propose a risk evaluation method for energy projects by integrating cloud model and evidence theory,and use a hydropower project along the Belt and Road as an example to analyze and evaluate the project risks.Next,we establish an early warning framework for the investment risk of energy projects along the Belt and Road,and integrate the two methods of gray prediction and pattern recognition to warn the risk status of energy projects.Finally,we summarize the findings of the study and propose corresponding countermeasures by combining risk factors,risk assessment and risk warning.The study found that: First,the risks of energy enterprises’ investment projects along the Belt and Road include political risks,economic risks,energy risks,environmental risks,enterprise risks and project risks.Among them,political risks can be subdivided into national political games,cultural conflicts and the stability of the host country regime.Economic risk can be subdivided into macroeconomic risk,host country economic development level and business environment.Energy risk can be subdivided into changes in energy reserves and changes in energy exports.Environmental risk can be subdivided into natural environmental risk and environmental pollution liability.Enterprise risk can be subdivided into industry risk,technology risk and capital risk.Project risk can be subdivided into organizational management and engineering control.Second,the cloud model combined with evidence theory transforms the qualitative linguistic descriptions of experts into quantitative data with conflict correction and information fusion,which can be used to assess the risk value of energy enterprises’ investment projects along "the Belt and Road" route.The example concludes that project risk analysis should integrate the external environment and internal management of the project,and verifies the feasibility and scientific validity of the cloud model and evidence theory for assessing project risk.Thirdly,the early warning framework proposed by integrating grey forecasting and pattern recognition is accurate and intuitive in warning the risk of energy projects along "the Belt and Road".By substituting the data of a hydroelectric power plant project into the early warning model,we conclude that the project will be in a low alert level for a long time,which verifies that the early warning framework can effectively monitor the project investment security level of energy enterprises in "the Belt and Road" region.The main contributions of this study are:(1)To identify risk factors and build a multi-level risk factor index system for energy enterprises’ investment losses in the countries along "the Belt and Road",which provides quantitative measurement criteria for risk assessment,risk warning and related follow-up studies.(2)The risk assessment method combining cloud modeling and evidence theory can solve the problem of linguistic ambiguity and uncertainty in multi-attribute decision making,which is applicable to similar investment projects,and provides a new technical path for the risk assessment of energy enterprises’ investment in projects along "the Belt and Road".(3)The early warning framework composed of grey prediction and pattern recognition is suitable for dealing with small sample cases compared with conventional prediction models,and the process of alert level identification has been added to improve the intuitiveness and accuracy of risk status judgment,which provides a risk warning guide for Chinese energy companies’ investment in projects along "the Belt and Road".