JAKARTA — Indonesia says it will stop building new coal-fired power plants after 2023 to meet its carbon-neutral goals — but the more than 100 plants to be built by then will still be churning out CO2 decades after that.
Zulkifli Zaini, CEO of state-owned electricity utility PLN, said there would be no more new thermal plants after an ongoing program to add 35,000 megawatts (MW) to the national grid — powered mostly by coal — is completed.
That program, rolled out in 2015, calls for building 117 new coal-fired power plants, with only 2,000 MW coming from renewable energy sources.
Zulkifli said construction of the new coal plants is expected to be finished by 2023. Outside of the 35,000 MW program, there’s a parallel project to add 7,000 MW to the grid, again mostly from coal.
“After these [programs] are done, we are committed to add electricity in the future by focusing only on new and renewable energy,” Zulkifli said.
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