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Interesting article showing the complexity that exists between ideology and reality, everyone wants to be 'clean', but suffering the pain seems to be a stumbling block.
From the article:
When Indonesia agreed last year to clean up its energy system with an estimated $20 billion of help from a coalition of wealthy countries and large financial institutions, world leaders hailed the deal as “extraordinary,” “realistic,” and “historically large.”
Almost 10 months later, as Southeast Asian leaders gather in Jakarta, the hosts have little to show off. A much-anticipated investment blueprint has been postponed. Parties have yet to agree on governance, baseline data or the funding required to curb greenhouse emissions and wean the world’s largest coal exporter off fossil fuels. The most ambitious of the Just Energy Transition Partnerships—the international finance projects designed to cut climate-warming emissions—is faltering.
One especially thorny issue is that Indonesia’s coal-dependency is greater and more complex than all sides initially acknowledged. A 362-page draft document reviewed by Bloomberg spotlights the rapid growth of a fleet of dedicated, “captive” coal-fired plants powering industrial expansion but not connected to the grid. Incomplete data, especially on new and planned facilities, means even the exact scale of the problem is unclear.
Indonesia is the biggest emitter in Southeast Asia by a long shot, thanks to vast coal reserves and a power-station construction boom over the past decade or so. But its regional neighbors and other emerging economies also depend on coal-fired plants that will need to be retired to prevent the worst consequences of global warming. Vietnam is advancing with its own JETP. Senegal struck a deal in June.
The initial promise of peaking Indonesia’s power sector emissions by 2030 at no more than 290 million tons of carbon dioxide, about 20% below a baseline level for the year, looks out of the question. An alternate scenario laid out in the draft plan would raise the target maximum to 395 MT of CO2, to account for the construction of new captive plants to serve growing industrial power needs.
Then there is the question of the emissions target agreed last year. People close to those discussions say negotiators sidestepped the impact of Indonesia’s growing fleet of captive coal-fired power plants, single-purpose engines built to support nickel production and other heavy industry in places the grid doesn’t reach. At best, the issue was dramatically underestimated, which may explain why the original deal included a loophole for new captive coal plants.
According to the draft, current captive capacity is around 13 gigawatts with another 21.5 in the pipeline, and almost half of that is already under construction. That is higher than previous assumptions—Indonesia’s total coal-power fleet is usually pegged at roughly 40 GW, so captive accounts for about a third—and points to a rate of growth at odds with the need to eliminate coal entirely by mid-century to hit global climate commitments.
Worse, the lack of centralized data casts doubt even on the new figures and makes credible estimates for a clean-up impossible. There are questions around the age, size and function of captive coal plants, which are not part of the numbers published by the state utility and where few parties involved have incentives to be transparent.
From the article:
When Indonesia agreed last year to clean up its energy system with an estimated $20 billion of help from a coalition of wealthy countries and large financial institutions, world leaders hailed the deal as “extraordinary,” “realistic,” and “historically large.”
Almost 10 months later, as Southeast Asian leaders gather in Jakarta, the hosts have little to show off. A much-anticipated investment blueprint has been postponed. Parties have yet to agree on governance, baseline data or the funding required to curb greenhouse emissions and wean the world’s largest coal exporter off fossil fuels. The most ambitious of the Just Energy Transition Partnerships—the international finance projects designed to cut climate-warming emissions—is faltering.
One especially thorny issue is that Indonesia’s coal-dependency is greater and more complex than all sides initially acknowledged. A 362-page draft document reviewed by Bloomberg spotlights the rapid growth of a fleet of dedicated, “captive” coal-fired plants powering industrial expansion but not connected to the grid. Incomplete data, especially on new and planned facilities, means even the exact scale of the problem is unclear.
Indonesia is the biggest emitter in Southeast Asia by a long shot, thanks to vast coal reserves and a power-station construction boom over the past decade or so. But its regional neighbors and other emerging economies also depend on coal-fired plants that will need to be retired to prevent the worst consequences of global warming. Vietnam is advancing with its own JETP. Senegal struck a deal in June.
The initial promise of peaking Indonesia’s power sector emissions by 2030 at no more than 290 million tons of carbon dioxide, about 20% below a baseline level for the year, looks out of the question. An alternate scenario laid out in the draft plan would raise the target maximum to 395 MT of CO2, to account for the construction of new captive plants to serve growing industrial power needs.
Then there is the question of the emissions target agreed last year. People close to those discussions say negotiators sidestepped the impact of Indonesia’s growing fleet of captive coal-fired power plants, single-purpose engines built to support nickel production and other heavy industry in places the grid doesn’t reach. At best, the issue was dramatically underestimated, which may explain why the original deal included a loophole for new captive coal plants.
According to the draft, current captive capacity is around 13 gigawatts with another 21.5 in the pipeline, and almost half of that is already under construction. That is higher than previous assumptions—Indonesia’s total coal-power fleet is usually pegged at roughly 40 GW, so captive accounts for about a third—and points to a rate of growth at odds with the need to eliminate coal entirely by mid-century to hit global climate commitments.
Worse, the lack of centralized data casts doubt even on the new figures and makes credible estimates for a clean-up impossible. There are questions around the age, size and function of captive coal plants, which are not part of the numbers published by the state utility and where few parties involved have incentives to be transparent.