C20 would like to bring Indonesia’s PLN, an expert from South Africa, an expert from the Republic of Korea, Mexico’s CFE (Comisión Federal de Electricidad), and India’s NTPC (National Thermal Power Corporation Limited) to have a discussion on the role and perspectives of utilities’ role in mitigating climate change.
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Jakarta, 29 July 2022 – Southeast Asia is a strategic area with the second largest economic growth in Asia after China. Southeast Asia is predicted to continue to develop economically. Energy demand is also predicted to continue to rise. With the condition that fossil energy is still abundant in the Southeast Asian region, joint efforts between countries in Southeast Asia are needed to achieve decarbonization without compromising economic growth.
South Korea and China, which are investors in various fossil projects, especially coal-fired power plants in the Southeast Asia region, have committed to no longer finance PLTU projects abroad in 2021. This commitment is expected to be a signal that will lead to more massive renewable energy investment.
Dongjae Oh, program lead for climate finance, Solutions for Our Climate (SFOC) in a webinar entitled “The State of Southeast Asia Energy Transition” stated that South Korea’s commitment to no longer finance coal-fired power plants is indeed quite surprising but there are other things that should be wary of related South Korean investment preferences.
“Despite having withdrawn funding for coal-fired power plants, South Korea continues to invest in the oil and gas sector in Southeast Asia with a value of 10 times, namely $127 billion from coal investment of only $10 billion. Indonesia is the largest recipient of oil and gas investment from South Korea,” Dongjae explained.
Dongjae added that gas is considered by the Korean government as a clean alternative energy for the transition period.
China also announced that it would no longer finance overseas coal projects in September 2021. A number of Chinese foreign and domestic policies have changed since then. Isabella Suarez, a researcher at the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air, explained that the Chinese government has begun to include a clause on the termination of coal financing in their law.
“A number of local Chinese banks are also starting to state that they will no longer finance coal projects,” Isabella added.
The withdrawal of South Korea and China in financing coal-fired power plants is expected to urge ASEAN countries to develop renewable energy more massively.
Meanwhile, the energy transition situation in several Southeast Asian countries still needs a lot of encouragement and incentives.
Handriyanti Diah Puspitarini, a senior researcher at the Institute for Essential Services Reform (IESR), said that the current state of the energy transition in Indonesia is quite slow and not enough to meet the climate mitigation target to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees.
“If Indonesia doesn’t do something to accelerate the penetration of renewable energy, according to the IESR calculation in 2025 we will only reach 15% renewable energy in the energy mix and 23% in 2030,” explained Handriyanti.
Handriyanti emphasized the importance of the Indonesian government to seek funding models and have consistent political will in Indonesia’s energy transition process, considering that the transition process takes a long time and requires large amounts of funds.
Similar to the situation in Indonesia’s electricity sector, the Philippines is still dominated by fossil energy in its electricity sector. Albert Dalusung, energy transition advisor, Institute for Climate and Sustainable Cities (ICSC) said that the Philippine government is currently focusing on reducing the use of oil in the transportation sector and developing renewable energy.
“The president has stated that renewable energy is at the forefront of the climate agenda, the high price of fossil energy has also made the government change its energy policy,” explained Albert.
Indonesia’s neighboring country, Malaysia, has a target of 31% renewable energy by 2025 and achieves carbon neutral status by 2050. Antony Tan, executive officer (Sustainability & Finance), All Party Parliamentary Group Malaysia on Sustainable Development Goals (APPGM – SDG), stated that currently Malaysia is optimistic that it can achieve this target.
“However, there are things that need to be improved in energy policy in Malaysia, namely the need for a specific ministry of energy and a more holistic policy to design a more sustainable transportation system,” Antony explained.
Report Launching and Discussion – Retirement Plan and Financing Needs for Accelerated and Just Coal Power Phase Out in Indonesia. Held by IESR, University of Maryland, and Bloomberg Philanthropies on August 3, 2022.
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Jakarta, 15 June 2022 – The dominance of coal-fired power plants (CFPP) in Indonesia’s electricity system is one of the causes of the below optimal utilization of the abundant technical potential of renewable energy. Around 70% of electricity generation in Indonesia still comes from CFPP, where most of CFPP units are under 10 (ten) years old. Moreover, the growth in electricity demand is not as high as projected, thus causing more electricity supply. This condition closes the opportunity for massive integration of renewable energy generation in this decade which is even greater due to the transition of the electricity system towards net-zero emission.
The Institute for Essential Services Reform (IESR), in its study entitled The Flexible Thermal Power Plants analyzed that as a temporary measure, it is necessary to retrofit the coal power plant to be operated flexibly. This will shift the role of the CFPP, which originally functioned purely as a baseload, to be able to adjust the output according to the intermittent renewable energy, thereby helping the stability of the electricity network. This option can be implemented before the CFPP is permanently phased out. It means that flexible power plants will be discontinued after the supply of renewable energy can meet demand and the interruption can be overcome with other options, such as the interconnection of the electricity grid, management of electricity demand through market mechanisms, and alternative energy storage such as batteries, hydrogen gas turbines.
“Based on the IESR study, for Indonesia’s electricity system to be in line with the Paris Agreement targets, by 2030 around 47% of electrical energy in Indonesia must come from renewable energy plants. The challenge is that the over the capacity of PLN’s power plants which reaches 5 GW, makes the renewable energy mix in the system unable to be increased without reducing the capacity of the CFPP through early retirement or reducing the capacity factor of the CFPP by carrying out flexible operating modes. The government and PLN’s plans to retire 5 GW of CFPP and replace 3.7 GW with renewable energy generators give little hope. This step needs to be complemented by a more flexible CFPP operation to increase the use of renewable energy,” said Fabby Tumiwa, Executive Director of IESR.
IESR views the flexible operation of the CFPP as something that can be technically done by Indonesia. CFPP in Indonesia is dominated by sub-critical CFPP so that it can replicate the practice of flexible operation of CFPP in other countries, which is generally also applied in sub-critical CFPP.
In addition, CFPPs in Indonesia are generally young (0-22 years old), with an average age of 9 years. About 55% are outside Java-Madura-Bali (Jamali), and the island of Sumatra, and about 34% are in Jamali and Sumatra. Retrofitting a young CFPP to operate flexibly can be a better choice because it does not require an expensive investment, even without cost, compared to modifying an old CFPP. Thus, IESR encourages the government to map power plants by age group to prepare a flexible PLTU operation plan. The plan needs to be integrated with a larger renewable energy mix target.
Not only that, the current oversupply of electricity should be an opportunity to operate the CFPP flexibly. According to the latest PLN RUPTL, the ideal reserve margin for the Jamali system is around 35% (PLN, 2021). Meanwhile, the Jamali system’s reserve margin has even reached 46.8%.
“The excess reserve margin in some systems means that some of the power plants in the system do not need to be fully operated, so there is an opportunity for retrofitting which will require the power plant to stop operating for approximately 6 months to a year,” explained Raditya Wiranegara, Senior Researcher, IESR who is also is the author of the Study of Flexible Thermal Power Plants: An Analysis of Operating Coal-Fired Power Plants Flexibly to Enable the High-Level in Variable Renewables in Indonesia’s Power System
This IESR study shows that flexible CFPP operation retrofit can be focused on reducing the minimum load of CFPP, from 50% to 30%, increasing the CFPP’s ability to ramp rate of 2 times the usual load, and speeding up start-up time from 2-10 hours to 1.3-6 hours. The benefit of reducing the CFPP minimum load is to reduce costs due to the start-up/shutdown process, which will become more frequent if the electricity mix from renewable energy is higher. Another reason, apart from producing high emissions, is that if the CFPP frequently does start-up/shutdown, it will have implications for high operating costs because start-up/shutdown requires expensive diesel oil. Furthermore, the flexibility of the CFPP will reduce system costs because the flexible operating costs of the CFPP are cheaper than using power storage. In addition, the flexible operation of the CFPP can provide a wider role for other generators and energy storage, such as batteries and natural gas-fired power plants.
Reflecting on the experiences of Germany and India, which had earlier retrofitted steam power plants that were more flexible, IESR submitted recommendations to the Indonesian government covering the following 3 categories, namely policies and contracts, market, as well as technical and stakeholder involvement.
In terms of the regulatory framework, the government needs to restructure the terms of a flexible Power Purchasing Agreement (PPA) for CFPP. This includes revising the Electricity Purchase Agreement (PPA), which currently places the CFPP as the base load.
“For flexible operations to be implemented, a revision of the PPA, which still has a long tenor, 30 years, and requires generators to operate at a high capacity factor, 80 to 85%, needs to be done. On the other hand, the revised PPA should encourage generators to operate flexibly by negotiating clauses in the Take or Pay (ToP) scheme. This negotiation should consider reducing the ratio of 80% in the calculation of the ToP scheme, as well as encouraging generator operators to participate in the ancillary services and capacity market. By participating in these two markets, it is hoped that the losses from decreasing the ratio in the ToP scheme can be covered,” said Raditya.
Meanwhile, for a market mechanism that allows for greater development of renewable energy, the government needs to build a supply mechanism to determine the price of renewable energy that is more competitive. For this market to work, there must be an independent body set up to regulate the newly formed market and its supply mechanism.
Technically, the government must identify CFPP units for flexible CFPP pilot projects such as subcritical CFPPs that are less than 5 years old, with capacities between 100 MW and 600 MW. In addition, you can choose a CFPP located in the Sulawesi system for this pilot project.
“The power plant in this system is dominated by young units. In addition, the trend of using renewable energy in this system is quite optimistic. By 2030 it is estimated that half of the generation in this system will come from renewable energy based on the electricity system planning to model using PLEXOS that is being carried out by IESR. It is hoped that this project will assist in determining economic viability and identifying initial capital investment as well as operational and maintenance costs,” concluded Raditya.
IESR also encourages capacity building for policymakers, regulators, and electricity operators to run CFPP flexibly. It is useful to provide them with the knowledge they need to prepare market regulations and reform existing electric power markets.***
Jakarta, 22 March 2022 – Indonesia through its LTS-LCCR (Long Term Strategy Low Carbon Climate Resilience) document states that it will achieve carbon neutral status in 2060 or sooner. The capacity of fossil energy in Indonesia’s energy system, especially electricity, is highlighted because with the aim of becoming carbon neutral, Indonesia must immediately retire most of its coal-fired power plants.
At the A Just Energy Transition: Matching Learning Curves from Germany and Indonesia Symposium held online on March 22, 2022, Ottmar Edenhofer, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, explained that in order to achieve the emission reduction target of the Paris Agreement, the Southeast Asia region must reduce coal capacity by 60% within this decade.
“Coal absorbs a large portion of our carbon budget, to maintain our carbon budget reserves, we have to significantly reduce the current coal capacity,” said Ottmar.
Holding the G20 Presidency, Indonesia has made a just energy transition one of its priority issues. Just like Indonesia in the G20-presidency, Germany, which holds the G7 presidency at this time, has also made the energy transition one of the main topics. The similarity of the main agenda of the two alliances of countries with the highest economic growth in the world must be an accelerator of the global energy transition in general, especially in Indonesia.
Patrick Graichen, State Secretary at the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, sees this common vision as a good thing, but also needs to be coupled with efforts to bring it down into action.
“We need strong leadership, a clear carbon-neutral vision in a country, and policy and financial support to quickly reach our carbon-neutral targets,” he explained.
The Executive Director of the Institute for Essential Services Reform (IESR), Fabby Tumiwa, on the same occasion said that currently Indonesia needs to reconsider its relationship with coal. Dominating Indonesia’s electricity sector for more than 60%, coal retirement is one of Indonesia’s key decarbonization strategies as well as the key to achieving the Paris Agreement targets for Indonesia.
“Indonesia’s emission reduction actions referring to the LTS-LCCR document are not sufficient to meet the Paris Agreement targets, we need even more ambitious efforts,” explained Fabby.
Fabby explained that currently one of the issues facing Indonesia is related to electricity infrastructure which is designed for coal-fired power plants. PLN itself still has an obligation to build a coal power plant which has entered the contract period as part of the 35 GW project launched by the government in 2015. One of the impacts of this mega-project is that several CFPP units are still relatively new, which results in higher retirement costs.
“The current situation for PLN itself is quite difficult, but we have to start anyway. With the support of the right policies, we can do it,” explained Fabby.
Energy transition is one of the main issues in global forums, one of which is the G20. If the G20 countries are serious about pushing for an energy transition, this must also be accompanied by policy support. It is important to provide a comprehensive energy transition package to ensure that the transition is fair and just and does not leave any party in trouble as a result of this transition. Stefan Schurig, Secretary General of F20, also highlighted the role of the G20 countries which is still not optimal in encouraging the energy transition.
“Keeping the temperature rise at 1.5 degrees is still an option for us right now, and we can still work on it together,” Stefan said.
Then the hydropower energy, the potential which is up to 94.5 GW, but only 6.1 GW has been utilized. In addition, according to research by the Institute for Essential Services Reform (IESR), Indonesia’s geothermal energy potential is 29.5 GW, but only 2.3 GW of which has been exploited.
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Kendari, 7 February 2022 – The world is facing major changes in response to the increase in the earth’s temperature which has increased by 1.1 degrees Celsius since the pre-industrial era. Various global commitments have been agreed to limit the increase in the earth’s temperature to no more than 2 degrees Celsius by the middle of this century. The rise of the global temperature is caused by carbon emissions produced by burning fossil fuels, one of which is in the energy sector.
Indonesia is committed to reducing its emissions by 29% with its own efforts and 41% with foreign assistance, and achieving net-zero emissions by 2060 or sooner.
Dr. Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, senior energy observer, during the “Seminar Pertambangan” – mining seminar, celebrating Indonesia’s National Press Day, said that the energy sector plays a crucial role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
“But keep in mind, it doesn’t mean that the net-zero emission issue will only become a burden for PLN because it is related to energy issues. It needs collaboration from various parties to ensure that the 2060 target is achieved,” he concluded, ending his keynote speech.
PLN has a big role in creating a market for renewable energy. To achieve the target of renewable energy, the involvement of the private sector is needed. Therefore, policies and a conducive investment climate need to be orchestrated.
Dadan Kusdiana, Director General of EBTKE at the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources said that Indonesia is still aligned and on track to meet the international agreement commitments, but there are options for various accelerations.
“We have compiled a national roadmap to achieve net-zero emissions by 2060, and we keep looking for possible options to accelerate existing targets,” he stressed.
Specifically from the electricity sector, Evy Haryadi, Director of Corporate Planning at PLN, stated that his party was currently in a dilemma. On one hand, currently available power plants at affordable prices are fossil generators (coal power) that produce high emissions, replacing them with renewable energy plants requires a huge investment.
“We see a declining trend in electricity prices from renewable energy such as solar and wind currently ranging from 18-21 cents per kWh, compared to coal (6-8 cents/kWh) for now electricity from renewable energy is still more expensive.”
Fabby Tumiwa, Executive Director of the Institute for Essential Services Reform (IESR), reminded that PLN needs to be careful in looking at investment trends in the electricity sector. The commercial and industrial sectors make clean energy the main need and prerequisite for investing in a country.
“Coal-fired power plants are not the cheapest power plants. Government subsidies through the DMO (Domestic Market Obligation) scheme keep coal prices at USD 70/ton, making the price of electricity from PLTU look cheap. Even though the price of coal in the market currently reaches USD 150/ton,” he explained.
Fabby continued, if the coal price of USD 150/ton is transferred to PLTU, the cost of electricity generation will increase by 32% – 61%.
Energy system disruption is happening all over the world. To ensure the reliability, affordability and sustainability of Indonesia’s energy system, PLN must carry out a transformation. This transformation will also reduce the risk of stranded assets for PLN and IPP (Independent Power Producer). As technology develops, it is estimated that in the next few years the cost of installing solar PV and batteries will be cheaper than the operating costs of a coal-fired power plant.
To achieve the common goal of achieving net-zero emissions by 2060 or sooner, increasing the capacity of renewable energy must be carried out. The currently operating coal power plant needs to be managed wisely and gradually reduced. The Indonesian government’s plan to phase down 9.2 GW of coal-fired power plants through the Energy Transition Mechanism scheme is the right step, but the government has the opportunity to take more aggressive steps.
2021 is marked as the year of the rebound of emission especially in the G20 countries as the economic and social activity is restarting. Previously, emission in the G20 recorded a decrease due to government regulation to overcome the Covid-19 outbreak. Although 14 G20 states have proposed net zero targets which covers around 61 percent of GHG emissions in the world, it is still not aligning with the 1.5 degree Celsius pathway. Climate Transparency Report 2021 finds that some countries such as Argentina, China, India, and Indonesia are projected to exceed their 2019 emissions level. As the window of opportunity to comply with the Paris Agreement is getting narrow, the G20 countries need to raise their climate ambition higher and to move together fighting the climate crisis.
The Climate Transparency Report, an annual report reviewing the climate ambition and policy of the G20 countries, stating several key findings for the 2021 report that was launched on October 14, 2021. They are:
In the year of 2021, 14 G20 countries are updating their climate ambition and proposing a net-zero target. 13 updated NDC were submitted to UNFCCC and 6 of those countries i.e Argentina, Canada, EU (including France, Germany and Italy), South Africa, the UK and The US increased their NDC target, and that is good news. Unfortunately, all of them are not enough yet to comply with the 1.5 degree plan. By following the current ambition the global temperature will still rise up to 2.4 degrees. A more holistic and communal effort is definitely needed to keep the global temperature in the 1.5 degrees level.
“If the G20 were to align its targets and policies with one and a half degree pathways and implement those policies, the global emissions gap of around 23 gigatons can be reduced significantly,” said Justine Holmes, Solutions For Our Climate
During the economic recovery, most of the G20 countries are injecting subsidies for the fossil fuel sector. In fact, the amount of fossil fuel subsidies are way bigger than the green recovery package prepared by the G20 governments. From January 2020 to August 2021 the G20 committed USD 298 billion to subsidise the fossil fuel industry. USD 248 billion of the USD 298 billion has gone without the ‘green pact’ attached. Meaning the fossil fuel industry has no obligation to for instance lowering their emissions, or other deals to consider the environment or climate change situation.
As the economic activity is restarting, emission in the G20 country is rebounding again. Total emissions in 2020 were decreased up to 6% and it is projected to rise 4% this year. Countries like Argentina, China, India, and Indonesia are even projected to exceed the 2019 emissions level. This is actually predicted, that the decreased emissions in 2020 are closely related to the social activity restriction during the pandemic outbreak.
Coal-fired power plants are known for their intense carbon emissions. As of 2020, China (163 GW), India (21 GW), Indonesia (18 GW), and Turkey (12 GW) still have coal power plants on the pipeline. All G20 members will need to phase out coal between 2030 – 2040 to limit global average temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Fabby Tumiwa, Executive Director of IESR, during his presentation explained that currently Indonesia is still dominated by coal in its energy mix. In October, the Indonesian government issued a new RUPTL which accommodates more renewables share rather than thermal power plan, plus PLN plan to decommission the supercritical coal power plant starting from 2030.
“Recently we are also discussing the possibility to do an early coal moratorium before 2025 but it’s still the plan, not yet settled and we still provide subsidies on fossil fuel. Phasing out fossil fuel subsidies will help to expedite the energy transitions,” he concluded.
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Clean, Affordable, and Secure Energy (CASE) for Southeast Asia (SEA) is a regional programme running in Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines and Vietnam. CASE’s objective is to change the direction of the energy sector in Southeast Asia to substantially shift towards an evidence-based energy transition, aiming to increase political ambition to comply with the Paris Agreement.
Through CASE Indonesia, we would like to organize a discussion with speakers from the UK, and Europe representative to discuss what happens and what are the lessons learned. Indonesia does not have winter and reliance on natural gas is still small. However, with more intermittent power plants (e.g. solar) are planned to be installed, the government looks at using gas-fired power plants to balance this intermittency. We also hope this discussion will help set the right direction for the Indonesian energy transition.
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