Building Collaboration Between CSOs in ASEAN to Accelerate Energy Transition

press release

Jakarta, May 16, 2023 – As the Chair of ASEAN in 2023, Indonesia can engage civil society in enhancing ASEAN’s relevance in various aspects aligned with global development challenges. These include increasing ambitions for regional climate targets, developing renewable energy, and promoting sustainable development.

The Institute for Essential Services Reform (IESR) believes that following the success of the energy transition agenda at the G20, Indonesia can foster cooperation among ASEAN countries to implement energy transitions in line with the targets of the Paris Agreement. This collaboration can help build joint efforts to strengthen resilience in the face of various threats and impacts of climate change, through sustainable development.

ASEAN already has the ASEAN Working Group on Climate Change (AWGCC) and ASEAN Working Group on Forest and Climate Change (AWGFCC), as well as ASEAN Energy Cooperation. However, achieving climate mitigation targets and advancing renewable energy require additional efforts and collaboration between these working groups, along with civil society organizations and transnational communities, to increase their contribution to the region.

IESR believes that Indonesia, as the Chair of ASEAN, can provide space for civil society at the regional level to be involved in the process of its chairmanship agenda in 2023, particularly regarding energy and climate issues.

“As one of the regional organizations projected to experience 4.7% economic growth in 2023 amidst weakening global demand, ASEAN is a promising region for investment, especially in the renewable energy sector. Leveraging its leadership in ASEAN, Indonesia can encourage and embrace civil society organizations in ASEAN to focus on the energy transition. By initiating concrete collaborations, together we can accelerate the energy transition in the region and tackle climate change,” said Fabby Tumiwa, IESR Executive Director, during the public discussion titled “Making Energy Green and Low Carbon to Support Sustainable Growth: Advancing the Role of Civil Society in Southeast Asia Energy Transition During Indonesia ASEAN Chairmanship 2023,” organized by IESR.

Economic growth in the ASEAN region needs to align with commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions following the Paris Agreement. ASEAN has set a target of achieving 23% of the renewable energy mix by 2025. However, according to the IEA, 80% of the primary energy mix in the Southeast Asian region still comes from fossil fuels. Reducing the cost of renewable energy is predicted by the IEA to increase the penetration of renewable energy in ASEAN by up to 70% by 2040. This can be achieved through intensive coordination and collaboration among stakeholders (government, civil society, and business stakeholders) in ASEAN, especially in the regional policy-making process.

Nevertheless, Arief Rosadi, Coordinator of the IESR Climate Diplomacy Project, highlights that ASEAN currently lacks a formal channel for civil society to express aspirations, particularly on climate and energy issues. Therefore, Indonesia needs to lead ASEAN in providing an inclusive and constructive dialogue space for civil society in the decision-making process within the region.

“One immediate step to take is to increase the intensity of communication between civil society in the region, enabling the sharing of information and the latest developments in each country regarding energy and climate issues. This aims to strengthen solidarity and a sense of ownership of ASEAN as a collective region,” said Arief.

According to him, Indonesia can encourage more public discussions that focus on knowledge exchange and provide data-based policy recommendations that support the acceleration of the energy transition through the development of renewable energy at the regional level. Additionally, this approach can offer opportunities for developing human resource capacity in the renewable energy sector.

“Another important action is to strengthen grassroots collaboration and civil society networks at the regional level. This collaboration can contribute to the achievement of the climate agenda and energy transition in the region by sharing good practices and technical knowledge,” Arief added.

The Increase of Emission Reduction Targets in Indonesia’s NDC is Still a Long Way to Mitigating a Climate Crisis

Jakarta, 6 December 2022- Indonesia has submitted Enhanced Nationally Determined Contributions (ENDCs) documents by increasing the target of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by only around 2%. The Institute for Essential Services Reform (IESR), which is a member of the Climate Action Tracker (CAT), a consortium of three think tanks that conducts monitoring and assessment of climate change policies in 39 countries and the European Union, found that the slight increase in Indonesia’s NDC target was still insufficient to prevent a global temperature rise of 1.5°C.

In Enhanced NDC, the target of reducing emissions by own efforts (unconditional) increases from 29% in the Updated NDC document to 31.89% in 2030, and with international assistance (conditional) increases from 41% to 43.2%. IESR and CAT view that Indonesia should be able to set even more ambitious targets, especially after the issuance of Presidential Regulation (Perpres) No 112 of 2022 concerning the Acceleration of Renewable Energy Development for the Provision of Electricity.

“Indonesia is still hesitant to set ambitious emission reduction targets and play in the safe zone. The reduction target set in the Enhanced NDC (E-NDC) is too easy to achieve because the reference is the business-as-usual emission increase projection in 2030. The emission reduction target should be based on the absolute emission level based on a certain year. To be in line with the 1.5°C ambition, emissions from the energy sector in 2030 must be equivalent to the level of emissions from the energy sector in 2010,” said Fabby Tumiwa, Executive Director of IESR, at the launch of the results of the CAT assessment of Indonesia’s climate action and policies.

To achieve significant emission reductions, Indonesia needs to carry out more ambitious mitigation in the sectors with dominant emitters, such as the energy sector, and the forest and land sector. Having abundant renewable energy potential, even up to more than 7 TW, Indonesia can utilize it as a source of energy with minimal emissions.

However, until 2021, the renewable energy mix in the energy system in Indonesia is still 11.5%. IESR views that with several developments in international support and the government’s commitment to early retirement coal power plants will provide free space for the development of renewable energy so that it can achieve the target of 23% renewable energy in 2025, even reaching 40% in 2030. In the Deep Decarbonization of Indonesia Energy System study (2021), IESR concludes that by 2050, 100% utilization of renewable energy in Indonesia’s energy system is technically and economically feasible.

“Indonesia’s climate action status can be enhanced by ensuring that climate policies in this decade are implemented to fulfil a fair contribution based on global efforts (fair share). The NDC target with international assistance must also be consistent, at least with the optimal path with the lowest cost for the ambition of 1.5°C (global least cost pathways),” explained Delima Ramadhani, Coordinator of Climate Action Tracker, IESR.

According to her, the dominance of coal-fired power plants, which are currently around 61% of Indonesia’s energy system, needs to be significantly reduced to only 10% of coal-fired power plants that do not use carbon capture and storage technology (unabated coal-fired power plan) in 2030 and terminate their operations gradually until stop completely by 2040. For that, Indonesia must increase its climate commitments, and international assistance plays a major role in the implementation of the coal phase-out per the Paris Agreement.

Several funding mechanisms for ending coal operations have also been discussed and agreed upon by Indonesia, such as the Energy Transition Mechanism scheme and the Just Energy Transition Partnerships (JETP). IESR considers that, although it is still not aligned with the 1.5°C targets, the JETP agreement is a step forward in the energy transition in Indonesia. The funding commitment of USD 20 billion is not enough to achieve decarbonization of the energy sector which requires at least a total investment of USD 135 billion by 2030.

“The portion of grants in JETP funding needs to be enlarged, which can be used to accelerate the strengthening of the energy transition ecosystem and project preparation. In addition, the next step after JETP has been agreed upon is the preparation of an investment plan that is carried out transparently and mainstreams the principles of justice in the energy transition by involving the participation of the community, local government and affected groups,” concluded Fabby.

Climate Action Tracker is an independent scientific analysis initiative that tracks countries’ climate actions and measures them against the globally agreed Paris Agreement goal of holding warming well below 2°C and pursuing efforts to limit warming to 1.5°C. CAT has provided an independent analysis of around 40 countries since 2009. CAT members include Climate Analytics, the New Climate Institute, and the Institute for Essential Services Reform (IESR), which joined as partners in 2022.