Coal, Power and Coal-Powered Politics in Indonesia

Despite its commitment under the Paris Agreement to reduce GHG emissions, Indonesia envisages substantial increases in coal-fired capacity, making it one of the countries with the largest possible future coal capacity additions globally. To understand the political forces behind these developments, we carry out expert interviews to examine how individual actors, their objectives as well as the country context influence energy policy formulation. We find that under the current president Jokowi, energy policy formulation has been dominated by the objective of public infrastructure development by State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs), while securing popularity for the presidential election in 2019. Moreover, diminishing export markets have provided an incentive for the politically well-connected coal industry to lobbying for the construction of coal-fired power plants to ensure domestic demand. We find SOEs to be prevalent in Indonesia's energy sector and subject to political instrumentalization. There is a strong incentive to expand coal mining as a key economic activity, whose royalties significantly contribute to public local and national public budgets. Climate change abatement, by contrast, is of low priority and mainly addressed as a forestry issue.