JAKARTA — Indonesia must stop building new coal-fired power plants by 2020 if it wants to do its part to cap global warming under the targets of the Paris climate agreement, new analysis shows.
The country is one of the few still actively planning and constructing new plants, putting it on a trajectory to miss its climate commitments, aimed at limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels and achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
In an analysis of four scenarios, carried out by the Institute for Essential Services Reform (IESR), a Jakarta-based think tank, only one would see Indonesia contribute to those goals — and it starts with scrapping the dozens of coal-fired power plants being built or planned.
Achieving that goal, the IESR says, “would require that there are fewer coal plants installed capacity in Indonesia,” including “no more coal plants … built after 2020.”
“The 1.5 [degree] scenario would even need 2 gigawatts less of coal plant installed capacity from current existing capacity by 2020, meaning coal plant phase-out should happen this year,” it adds.
That scenario sees burning of coal phased out altogether by 2048 and the country’s total emissions peak by 2028 at 274 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) before declining to zero by 2048.
