How ‘serious’ can US really be on Indonesia green energy if it pumps cash into oil site?

Name: Saving Bali’s coast: NGO tackles Indonesian island’s waste problem with a trash trawler
Uploaded: 2023-05-19T01:30:15.000Z
Duration: 2 min 7 s
Description: Saving Bali’s coast: NGO tackles Indonesian island’s waste problem with a trash trawler

Six months have passed since landmark G20 energy transition deal announced, aimed at helping Southeast Asia’s largest economy reach net-zero target faster

However, Jakarta is frustrated no money has been forthcoming. Meanwhile, the US’ Export-Import Bank is to help fund expansion of refinery in East Kalimantan

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Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo shakes hand with US President Joe Biden during the G20 summit in Bali in November. Will the green energy transition deal announced there come to fruition? Photo: via Reuters

Resty Woro Yuniar

Published: 9:30am, 19 May 2023

At the G20 summit in Bali in November, Indonesia and the United States announced a headline-grabbing US$20 billion energy transition deal aimed at helping the Southeast Asian nation curb its carbon emissions and reach its net-zero target a decade faster than planned.

Details of the Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) would be announced in six months, it was said at the time.

Six months have passed since the landmark deal and Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s biggest economy, finds itself in a stalemate with its JETP partners. Not only has a comprehensive investment plan not been publicly announced, Jakarta has openly voiced its frustration with its partners’ perceived lack of commitment in disbursing the promised money.

And, in fact, the only money Indonesia has been promised by the US recently is far from climate-friendly: last week the Export-Import Bank – a government agency that assists the export of American goods and services – said it would lend US$99.7 million to help fund the expansion of a refinery operated by Indonesian state-run oil firm Pertamina in the nation’s East Kalimantan province.

The bank’s move not only pokes holes in Washington’s commitment to the climate, but also risks increasing Indonesia’s reliance on fossil fuels, environmentalists and energy experts say.

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Saving Bali’s coast: NGO tackles Indonesian island’s waste problem with a trash trawler

In late 2021, after the COP climate change summit in Scotland, US President Joe Biden ordered federal agencies to stop funding new fossil fuel projects abroad.