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RI opts for less ambitious option than early coal retirement
Indonesia will focus more on emissions reduction programs as opposed to pushing for early retirement projects.
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Smoke and steam billows from the coal-fired power plant owned by Indonesia Power, next to an area for Jawa 9 and 10 Coal-Fired Steam Power Plant Project in Suralaya, Banten province, Indonesia, July 11, 2020. Picture taken July 11, 2020. REUTERS/Willy Kurniawan/File Photo (Reuters/WILLY KURNIAWAN)
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ndonesia will not put the early retirement of coal plants at the forefront of its emissions reduction ambitions and instead will focus more on controlling emissions from coal plants, which will remain operational until the end of their operational lifespans, the government said on Wednesday.
The Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry and state-owned electricity utility PLN have agreed to keep coal-fired power plants running until their operational periods end, but they vowed to implement means to reduce carbon emissions from these plants, a program that they describe as a coal phase-down.
This is as opposed to a coal phase-out, a scheme to retire the country’s coal plants early ahead of their operational lives, which the government has now decided to make conditional, depending on the funding being available.
“The energy ministry and PLN have agreed to focus more on [other] emissions-reduction efforts instead of [shutting down] coal-fired power plants,” Jisman Hutajulu, the energy ministry's electricity director general told reporters in Jakarta on Wednesday.
“The [early retirement program] will continue if funding is available and if it does not interfere with [electricity] system reliability,” he said, adding that the government had chosen not to put too much faith in international funding.
Jisman explained that before the power purchasing agreement (PPA) of each plant is over, the government will slowly reduce electricity use from these coal-plants, allowing them to reduce emissions in the process.
“We already have a coal fleet with a total capacity of 48 gigawatts that we’ve agreed to phase down. Later we will reduce the share until the PPAs end,” he said.
