America delivered. Japan delivered. South Africa delivered. Indonesia underwhelmed.

At the Leaders’ Summit on Climate on April 22-23, United States President Joe Biden convened 40 world leaders who were asked to pitch their enhanced national climate plan. This is to ensure the achievement by 2050 of a 2015 Paris Agreement goal linked with an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) call.

Carbon emission-induced global warming must not go beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius of pre-industrial levels, net-zero emission (NZE) is reached through deeper cuts in carbon dioxide emission, the world needs to halve emissions by 2030 to arrive at NZE in 2050, the IPCC wrote in the NZE concept in their 2018 report, “Global Warming of 1.5° C”.

Biden aims to decarbonize by 50 percent to 52 percent by 2030, below 2005 levels. This is almost twice the target former president Barack Obama set for 2025.

Japan Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga plans to upgrade Japan’s greenhouse gas emission cuts from 26 percent to 46 percent from 2013 levels by 2030 and will aim for a 50 percent target. South African President Matamela Cyril Ramaposa said his country’s emissions would drop starting from 2025 and not from 2035 as determined earlier.

Meanwhile, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo did not speak of boosting Indonesia’s climate action plan, the Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) that state parties must formulate to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement.

Indonesia, Jokowi stated, has updated its NDC to enhance the capacity of climate adaptation and resilience. The President, however, did not clarify the country’s commitment to mitigation and actions to reduce carbon emissions.

Indonesia’s NDC remains at reducing emissions by 29 percent and 41 percent with international cooperation by 2030, against a no-policy scenario as the baseline.

Jokowi’s remarks were crafted in caution, concealing what officials have already stated publicly in-country: Indonesia’s NDC, initially presented in 2015, remains at 29/41; and its NZE target is not 2050 but 2070. The reason is to allow for 5 percent to 6 percent annual economic growth using coal-fueled electric power.

Indeed, at an April 28 Institute for Essential Services Reform (IESR) webinar on reaching carbon neutrality before 2070, National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas) environment director Medrilzam said setting target figures were done “with great prudence, mindful of their implications”. For the United Nations’ annual climate conference this November in Glasgow, Scotland, he said Indonesia would have a “strong standpoint absent of pressure in influence from strong nations”.  

In a written question I submitted online as to why Indonesia’s 2070 NZE target is inconsistent with the IPCC’s 2050 NZE call, Medrilzam was circumspect in his reply.

Coordinating Maritime Affairs and Investment Minister Luhut Binsar Panjaitan has repeatedly said that Indonesia would reach its NZE goal before 2060, Medrilzam began.

“For sure, this entails numerous preconditions that are super-ambitious and require a mindset change of all policymakers in Indonesia, in the environment, as well as the economic and social sectors,” he said.

Nonetheless, officials are tight-lipped about the details of Jokowi’s coal-fueled economic growth ambitions and of making 2045 Indonesia‘s golden year while marking the nation’s centennial of independence.

In line with the transparency clause of the Paris Agreement (Annex: Article 13), officials should adequately clarify climate policy and allow public participation to make it an acceptable, workable policy. Crucial questions demand answers.

Why has the government not upgraded its NDC? How is NDC non-enhancement justified? Would a 2070 or even a 2060 NZE target not give rise to more frequent extreme weather events that lead to ecosystem ruin and climate refugee calamity? If the 2070 NZE target remains unchanged, what acts of mitigation and adaptation would the government take to minimize loss and damage?

In a post-summit open letter, the chairperson of the Jakarta-based Thamrin School of Climate Change and Sustainability called on world leaders to reach net-zero emission no later than 2050.

“Without political will and the ability to take ambitious targets from leaders around the world, the future that we were envisioning in the Paris COP [2015 climate conference] would only be an empty dream,” Thamrin School head Farhan Helmy lamented.

What impedes Indonesia from reaching the NZE goal by 2050 is the dominant use of carbon-emitting coal-burning power plants.

IESR executive director Fabby Tumiwa calls for a stop in new coal-based power plants by 2025, a phasing out of such plants by 2050 and phasing in renewable energy.

To reach NZE by 2050, Fabby called for a four-point strategy: boost renewable energy capacity and penetration on a large scale, a moratorium on new steam-powered power plants after 2025 and a phase-out of such plants and other thermal-based plants. Efficient energy use on the demand size must be increased. Electrification in energy user sectors, transportation and industry to name two, must be carried out, Fabby said in an online interview.

“If the government takes up this policy, for sure the coal industry and other fossil fuels must adjust. The government would no longer extract and burn coal.”

It is noteworthy that on May 7, state-owned electricity company PLN president director Zulkifli Zaini disclosed a plan to phase out fossil-fueled power plants and use more renewable energy in its power grid by 2050.

Further, to get to NZE by 2050, half the reductions “will need to come from technologies that are not yet ready for market”, International Energy Agency executive director Fatih Birol told the leaders’ summit.

“This calls for massive leaps in innovation — innovation across batteries, hydrogen, synthetic fuels, carbon capture and many other technologies,” Birol explained.  

The call to bust coal was forcibly voiced at the leaders’ summit by a Mexican-born teenager. Xiye Bastida, 19, identified herself as a climate justice activist.

Xiye aired eight demands for the “solutions that we need”. The first two are on fossil fuels, which include coal. Stop fossil fuel investment and subsidies. Stop any new fossil fuel infrastructure and fossil fuel extraction including pipelines.

President Jokowi may be viewed as a back-seat participant at Glasgow. However, he can earn a place in the front row if he can convert Indonesia’s coal moguls and industry chiefs to clean, renewable energy.

In Japan, private-firm actions are at the center of the government’s 2019 long-term climate and growth strategy to reduce emissions. Japan is reported to be the first country to provide explicit government support for companies to set science-based targets to decrease emissions. 

In March, 174 Japanese firms urged their government to halve emissions by 2030. Jokowi can take a page from Suga’s climate playbook.

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A senior journalist and instructor at the Dr. Soetomo Press Institute (LPDS) in Jakarta