Coal news and updates

Indonesia has yet to receive promised G7 funds to reduce coal use

NUSA DUA, Indonesia :Indonesia is still waiting for cheaper financing to hasten early retirement of coal-fired power plants under a pact with the rich nations of the G7 grouping, senior government officials said on Monday, in the transition to cleaner electricity.

The Southeast Asian nation of more than 275 million had been promised $20 billion in funds as part of the G7's Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP), unveiled in 2022, but very little money has been disbursed.

ADVERTISEMENT

Luhut Pandjaitan, a senior minister overseeing mining, said the current financing mechanism did not include any grants, and did not fix existing issues such as high costs of retirement.

"If you push us to retire our coal plants early, how do we finance it? The interest on the finance needs to be attractive," Luhut told the Coaltrans Asia conference.

"If they give a commercial (rate of) interest, what's the point?"

Indonesia, which has sought interest rates cheaper than those offered by markets, requires $94.6 billion by 2030 to develop clean power transmission and generation infrastructure to phase down coal power.

Grant funding identified in the JETP document amounted to just $153.8 million of the total pledged.

The lack of progress on the plan, described as the "single largest climate finance transaction" by a U.S. treasury official when first announced, has stalled efforts by the world's seventh-largest producer of coal-fired power to cut emissions.