Jakarta\u2013 Falling international demand and plummeting coal prices are derailing Indonesia\u2019s plans for expanding coal-fired power plants, as revealed this week by the Indonesian Coal Mining Association and PwC. The headlines focused on the possibility that the country\u2019s coal reserves could be exhausted by 2033. But for Indonesians, there is a more immediate threat.<\/p>\n
Despite years of profitable mining, with gross profits of $6.5 billion in 2011, the Indonesian Coal Mining Association (APBI-ICMA) is now calling for a huge public subsidy, including a raid on the country\u2019s pension funds, in order to survive.<\/p>\n
Its call for the government to pay a surcharge of 1% on the basic cost of Rp 1400\/kWh amounts to a subsidy of about US $230 million a year (Rp. 3.0 trillion). \u00a0The higher subsidy of 3% would cost the Indonesian taxpayer US $680 million a year (Rp. 8.9 trillion).<\/p>\n
This subsidy would be payable for 25-30 years, amounting to about US $6-7 billion \u2013 to provide 15 GW of coal-fired electricity, which is well below Indonesia\u2019s energy needs. \u00a0It blows a huge hole in the coal association\u2019s claim that coal is \u201crelatively cheap\u201d compared to other sources of electricity. The cost of producing solar electricity India, for example has fallen to $6.5c \/ kWh (Rp. 830\/kWh \u00a0as a result of ambitious government policies. \u00a0That is less than 60% of the current cost of coal-generated electricity in Indonesia.<\/p>\n
Arif Fiyanto, senior campaigner for Greenpeace Indonesia, said:<\/p>\n
\u201cIndonesian coal companies cannot be allowed to get away with this crazy plan. \u00a0Not content with scarring the landscape and in many cases walking away from clean-up costs, the companies now expect ordinary Indonesians to bail them out of their financial mess.<\/p>\n
\u201cIndonesians will never accept their pension funds being raided to prop up an ailing coal industry in this way. \u00a0Sources of finance are drying up as banks and other investors recognise that the coal industry is becoming a huge stranded asset. \u00a0It\u2019s clear the APBI-ICMA is unable to stand on its own feet, and has no future.<\/p>\n
\u201cIndonesia needs to turn its back on this fuel. \u00a0The money the coal companies are demanding would be better invested in renewable energy which, in the long term, would provide cleaner, cheaper energy for Indonesia people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Greenpeace will be releasing a more detailed analysis of the APBI-ICMA\u2019s proposals in the near future.<\/p>\n
Arif\u00a0 Fiyanto, Head of Climate and Energy Campaign Greenpeace Southeast Asia : 0811-180-5373<\/p>\n Rahma Shofiana, Media Campaigner, Greenpeace Indonesia, 0811-1461 674<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Greenpeace’s response to Indonesian Coal Mining Association (APBI-ICMA) calling for a huge public subsidy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":1412,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"p4_og_title":"","p4_og_description":"","p4_og_image":"","p4_og_image_id":"","p4_seo_canonical_url":"","p4_campaign_name":"","p4_local_project":"","p4_basket_name":"","p4_department":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[23,121,99],"p4-page-type":[16],"class_list":["post-801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-energy","tag-renewable-energy","tag-coal","tag-indonesia","p4-page-type-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/southeastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/southeastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/southeastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/southeastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/southeastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=801"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/southeastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2125,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/southeastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801\/revisions\/2125"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/southeastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/southeastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/southeastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/southeastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=801"},{"taxonomy":"p4-page-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/southeastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/p4-page-type?post=801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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