Energy Politics
As blackouts loom, Indonesia’s energy crisis highlights its addiction to coal
JAKARTA — An abrupt ban on coal exports by the Indonesian government for the whole month of January, on fears of a domestic supply shortage, should be a wake-up call to hasten the country’s transition away from the fossil fuel, experts say. In announcing the ban on Jan. 1, the Ministry of Energy and Mineral […]
COP26 cop-out? Indonesia’s clean energy pledge keeps coal front and center
JAKARTA — Indonesia has signed another seemingly landmark pledge at the COP26 climate summit underway in Glasgow, this time to phase out its use of coal, the dominant source in its energy mix, by the 2040s. But as with the first pledge it made at COP26 — to end deforestation by 2030, which it then […]
New restoration “Playbook” calls for political, economic, and social change
International forest and climate experts have released a “playbook” for ecosystem restoration with a set of 10 principles that they say, if followed, could be a game-changer. The Political Ecology Playbook, published in the journal Global Environmental Change, recognizes that issues such as climate change and forest loss are not just biophysical and environmental problems, […]
Scientists urge Biden to remove logging, fossil fuels, biomass from budget bills
More than 100 scientists have issued a letter urging U.S. President Biden and Congress to remove provisions promoting logging, forest biomass and fossil fuels from the multitrillion-dollar infrastructure and reconciliation (Build Back Better) bills.
Indonesia to retire coal-fired power plants while also adding more
JAKARTA — Indonesia says it will begin retiring coal-fired power plants for good — while still continuing to build more than a hundred new ones, in the latest mixed message from one of the last coal-friendly countries in the world. PLN, the state-owned power utility, which has a monopoly on the national grid, announced late […]