World moves away from coal, and so does ADB

Stefanno Reinard Sulaiman
The Jakarta Post

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Jakarta / Mon, August 5, 2019 / 05:56 pm

Heavy load: Front loaders transport coal to a truck at a port in Lianyungang, Jiangsu province, China, on Saturday. China’s import growth stood at 3 percent in November, the slowest since October 2016, and a fraction of the 14.5 percent seen in a Reuters poll.(Reuters/Stringer)

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has said it is staying away from coal-related projects in Indonesia and continues to open itself to gas and renewable energy investments, joining the wave of diversion by hundreds of financial institutions around the globe. Yuichiro Yoi, ADB unit head for Indonesia, infrastructure finance division 2 private sector operations dept., told The Jakarta Post that economic factors and public sentiment were the two reasons to avoid coal investment. “The world's moving away from coal, that’s the sentiment I can't change or deny, that is the sentiment in the majority of the world. I just have to play along," he said on the sidelines of a gas exhibition in Jakarta on Thursday. "If it [coal power plants] become a stranded asset, it is a credit risk. Going forward it'll be more difficult to do a project with coal. ...

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