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Calls for Indonesia to cut coal for net-zero emissions target
Coal made up 37 percent of the country’s energy consumption in 2019 while renewables only contributed around 9 percent to the country’s energy mix that year.
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Heavy-laden: A man returns from fishing as a tugboat pulling a coal barge passes by in Banda Aceh, Aceh, on April 26, 2020. (AFP/Chaideer Mahyuddin)
E
xperts have urged Indonesia, which is heavily reliant on coal for power generation, to stop relying on coal and other fossil fuels to support the global and its own net-zero emissions target and prevent the ongoing climate crisis from worsening.
The government has continued to rely on coal as the country’s primary energy supply in the past years, experts highlighted. They argued that the government had been gravely undermining the impact of coal’s usage on the ongoing anthropogenic climate crisis.
Their call came ahead of a climate summit hosted by United States President Joe Biden on Thursday and Friday. The summit aims to raise the world leader’s ambitions in mitigating the climate crisis. Forty leaders were invited to attend, including President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo.
Tri Mumpuni Iskandar, director of the non-profit People Centered Economic and Business Institute (IBEKA), highlighted Jokowi’s flagship 35,000-megawatt (MW) electricity program. The project is relying on coal and projected to use 200 million tons of the commodity every year.
“Why do we have to boost electricity use with dirty energy? We can instead use microhydro, wind and geothermal power plants,” Tri said during a virtual discussion held by the Foreign Policy Community of Indonesia (FPCI) on Tuesday.
Read also: RI to break long-term green energy promises at current pace: IESR
Coal made up 37 percent of the country’s energy consumption in 2019, followed by oil (34 percent) and gas (20 percent). Meanwhile, renewables only contributed around 9 percent to the country’s energy mix that year.
