As it Fades in the Global West, Coal Interests Look to a New Frontier of Greenwashing

For 35 years, Edi Suriani has seen coal dust impact him and his neighbors in his Indonesian village just a few kilometers from the Banten-Suralaya coal-fired plant in Indonesia, is one of the largest in the world.

According to the residents of  Suralaya, there is more air pollution on the island of Java, banana farms are less productive, neighbors and family members are increasingly sick, and local fisheries—once a source of livelihood for many—have collapsed.  

“The power plant does not provide benefits to residents. Instead, it kills us,” said Edi.

A recent report from the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air linked thousands of hospital visits and more than 1,500 deaths due to pollution from the plant and a negative economic cost of around $1.1 billion.

The Banten plant is huge, with eight units currently producing 4 gigawatts (GW) of electricity, enough to power more than 3 million households for a year. Much of it is being sent to the capital, Jakarta. And it's growing, with two new units producing two more GW currently being built. 

The next frontier of greenwashing

But in the future, says Indonesia’s national power authority, PLN, the Banten plant will be cleaner and greener. That’s because, instead of only burning coal, the Suralaya plant and others across the country will co-fire coal with "renewable" woody biomass and, eventually, "clean" hydrogen or ammonia. 

“By implementing co-firing, PLN can quickly reduce carbon emission and increase new renewable energy mix as they do not have to build new power plants,” said Darmawan Prasodjo, PLN’s director, during a press conference. He also said, “Co-firing…will support the government in suppressing carbon emissions in Indonesia to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060.”

Across Asia, co-firing is being promoted as a way to make coal greener and part of a clean energy future. But the science behind these claims is highly contested. Scientists question the climate benefits, while analysts at BloombergNEF note the high costs. Furthermore, climate change advocates fear it could harm regional climate coals.

The idea behind co-firing is relatively simple. By blending coal with wood pellets or ammonia, the plant can operate more cleanly and emit less greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, argues the Economic Research Institute for East Asia and ASEAN. This Jakarta-based government-linked think tank supports co-firing as a climate solution.  Moreover, because Asia’s coal fleet is significantly younger than Europe's or the U.S.’s, it’s being pushed as a way to use an existing asset while also making progress toward a net-zero climate goal.

According to government data shared with local nonprofits, the new Suralaya units are already burning 2-5 percent biomass, alongside at least 39 other coal plants in Indonesia and several more in Japan and South Korea.

“The biomass they are using is from wood pellets, chips, and sawdust, or waste, like palm kernel shells, rice husks, and urban areas,” said Amalya Reza, the bioenergy portfolio manager at Trend Asia, an Indonesian non-profit. “They have a target of 10 million tons of biomass, and of that, 8 million will come from energy wood plantations.”

“Co-firing is not only greenwashing, it's just this outright false solution, to begin with,” said Somang Yang, bioenergy lead at Solutions for our Climate, a Korea-based NGO. “It only extends the lifespan of the old coal power plants.” 

Indonesia is the world’s largest exporter of coal, and the coal lobby in Indonesia is both powerful and well-connected, according to Sisilia Dewi, an Indonesia campaigner with 350.org, a US-based non-profit climate group. 

“So much lobbying is happening from the coal industry,” said Sisilia. Technologies like co-firing “provide a way for fossil fuel companies to say that they are doing good things while they keep expanding.”

Another concern that coal opponents have is that renewable energy development is being neglected by focusing so much effort and financial resources on co-firing. For example, Amalya notes that Indonesia has vast untapped renewable energy resources, including solar and wind, which currently provide a paltry 1-2 percent of the electricity mix. 

“We have the potential for real renewable energy,” said Amalya. “We need to develop this, not false solutions like biomass, and go beyond burning to produce energy.”

Why co-firing? 

For decades, coal has been the target of environmental and public health proponents due to its being both the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel and also a source of dangerous particulate matter linked to health impacts around the world. 

This has led to the United States closing over 350 coal-fired power plants since 2010, according to the Sierra Club’s coal plant tracker, replaced by natural gas, wind, or solar generation. In Europe, too, the trend is clear, with half of the continent's coal plants set to retire by 2030, according to Bloomberg.

In Asia, however, the coal industry has grown immensely during that same time, now responsible for 77 percent of global coal consumption, according to the International Energy Agency. According to the non-profit Global Energy Monitor, since 2000, hundreds of new power plants have opened in China, India, Japan, and Indonesia. 

But climate concerns are growing globally alongside record-high heat and increasingly climate-linked natural disasters. The floods that recently ravaged northern China or the increasingly strong typhoons impacting the Philippines are two recent examples, and there’s increasing pressure on governments across Asia to shift away from coal and towards cleaner energy sources.

“Investing in co-firing would significantly hamper these countries’ development and eventually leave them with stranded assets as the rest of the world continues to move away from coal power,” said Evan Gach, the Program Coordinator for Kiko Network, a Japanese non-profit. “Asia’s clean energy development is crucial to meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement and limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5℃.”

Specifically, the coal industry argues that adding ammonia to existing plants will make them cleaner and emits fewer greenhouse gases, providing “zero-emission thermal energy.” Japan is leading the way, running a pilot test project to burn 20 percent ammonia with coal at the Hekinan plant in central Japan. 

If coal-fired power plants used green ammonia—produced from renewable energy—research shows it could result in significantly lower emissions, up to 50 percent by 2050, according to one analysis from ERIA. 

“Co-firing coal with ammonia is considered critical to Asia’s energy transition,” said Han Phoumin, senior energy economist at ERIA. He argues that the proportion of ammonia can increase over time and that, by 2050 or 2060, “some power generation can move to 100 percent ammonia.”

Co-Firing’s Empty Promises

However, to reduce emissions in line with the Paris Agreement, ammonia must be made using renewable energy, not, as is currently the case in the Japanese pilot project, with fossil fuels. And therein lies the problem, argues Seaver Wang, Asia lead and co-director for Climate and Energy at the non-profit Breakthrough Institute—there is not and may never be enough green ammonia to meet Asia’s co-firing goals. 

“The problem with co-firing is everything has to go perfectly to be climate justifiable,” said Wang, noting that overseas transport, leakage, and storage remain unsolved challenges. “If sufficient supply chains of ammonia from renewable energy sources fail to materialize, these policies won’t realize any climate benefits.”

Similarly, if the biomass being co-fired was a waste product, it too could make plants cleaner and reduce emissions.

However, according to Roger Smith, Japan's country director at the environmental non-profit Mighty Earth, the same issues exist with biomass, except in this case, it’s forests that may be felled. 

“For co-firing, there are no emissions requirements, no life cycle greenhouse gas accounting,” says Smith. “There just aren't tens of millions of tons of wood waste waiting around to be used, and there certainly isn't enough that could be remotely claimed to be sustainable.”

Japan and Korea would likely source woody biomass from Southeast Asia, including Vietnam, but also the U.S. and Canada, and currently considers all of it, no matter if it is genuine waste or from a virgin forest, as “zero emission.” In Indonesia, too, there are no standards or policies for biomass procurement, meaning that the Suralaya plant could already be consuming natural forests.

“Our concern is about deforestation,” said Amalya. “If co-firing takes place in 52 coal plants, we project they’ll need 10 million tons of biomass, which will drive deforestation of 2 million hectares of forests and produce 26 million tons CO2 equivalent emissions, not counting the burning. It will worsen the climate crisis in Indonesia.” 

Major impacts

Japan, which has the most ambitious plan for ammonia co-firing, is pushing this technology throughout Southeast Asia, too. According to Transition Zero, a non-profit think tank, four feasibility studies are underway to co-fire ammonia in coal plants in Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia, including the Suralaya plant. 

“What we’ve seen at some of these demonstration projects...they’ll co-fire at a very small fraction and market that as experimenting with next-generation clean tech, but what you’re essentially doing is running a coal-fired power plant as business as usual,” says Weaver.

Gach agrees that Japan should invest in proven climate change-fighting alternatives, such as offshore wind, which, according to the Global Wind Energy Council, has barely been tapped in Japan and Southeast Asia.

“Renewable energy is cheaper, more effective in reducing CO2 emissions, less reliant on foreign energy imports, and is available right now,” said Gach. “Whether you’re looking at it from an economic, environmental, or social perspective, renewables provide the most benefit as the basis of a just energy transition in Japan and throughout Asia.”