Money and Politics Put World’s Biggest Climate Deal at Risk
A draft blueprint for Indonesia’s $21.5 billion green aid package highlights significant obstacles, including a big loophole for new coal.
The initial promise of peaking Indonesia’s power sector emissions by 2030 at no more than 290 million tons of carbon dioxide, about 20% below a baseline for that year, looks out of the question.
Photographer: Bay Ismoyo/AFP/Getty Images
When Indonesia agreed last year to clean up its energy system with an estimated $20 billion of help from a coalition of wealthy countries and large financial institutions, world leaders hailed the deal as “extraordinary,” “realistic,” and “historically large.”
Almost 10 months later, as Southeast Asian leaders gather in Jakarta, the hosts have little to show off. A much-anticipated investment blueprint has been postponed. Parties have yet to agree on governance, baseline data or the funding required to curb greenhouse emissions and wean the world’s largest coal exporter off fossil fuels. The most ambitious of the Just Energy Transition Partnerships—the international finance projects designed to cut climate-warming emissions—is faltering.