China Helped Indonesia Build One of the World’s Biggest, Youngest Coal Fleets. It’s Still Growing. - Inside Climate News
insideclimatenews.org

Indonesia is one of the few countries still building new coal power plants, the most polluting sources of power. Chinese companies are playing a large role despite a pledge by Beijing to halt such support.

  • klammeraffe@lemmy.cafeEnglish
    41·
    3 days ago

    But but but green china? Solar panels? Are they just moving the pollution elsewhere and spit-shining a turd?

    • doubtingtammy@lemmy.ml
      2·
      3 days ago

      While this buildout was driven by Indonesian leaders, and Japan and South Korea have provided significant financing, too, no foreign nation has played a larger role than China.

      “China is a good friend for all the presidents to fulfill their campaign promises,” said Muhammad Zulfikar Rakhmat, director of the China-Indonesia desk at the Center of Economic and Law Studies, a research and advocacy group in Indonesia. Where lenders from other countries have pledged money without delivering, Rakhmat said, Chinese enterprises provided financing quickly and with few requirements.

      Today, Chinese companies are continuing to build new coal plants in Indonesia, despite a 2021 pledge by China’s president, Xi Jinping, that Beijing would end such financing.

      In an ironic twist, many of the new Chinese-backed coal plants are powering operations that Indonesian leaders say will help transition the world to cleaner energy. These so-called “captive” coal plants are not connected to the grid but instead serve as dedicated power sources for new industrial parks refining nickel, used in electric vehicle batteries, or manufacturing solar panel components. The projects are backed largely by private Chinese companies rather than state-owned enterprises, and their status as captive power plants appears to allow them to flow through a loophole in Xi’s 2021 pledge.

      Beyond these captive plants in Indonesia, China has largely stuck to that promise—only a few other Chinese-backed coal units were newly planned last year, in Kyrgyzstan, Zambia and Zimbabwe, according to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, an independent research group based in Finland.\

      It’s a good article. You should read it instead of just assuming it confirms all your anti-china bias. Don’t get me wrong, I think building new coal plants is bad even if it’s for nickle that goes into an electric car. IMO the CPC should stop private capital from investing in those “captive” plants as well.

    • silence7@slrpnk.netOPM
      21·
      3 days ago

      No. They’re both doing things which make a difference, and exporting the technology to cause others to develop in a costly and high-pollution way