Indonesia has pledged to curb its emission growth to 29% below business-as-usual levels by 2030, adding that this goal could be deepened to a 41% cut if it gets international support, according to the country’s final draft of its INDC seen by Carbon Pulse on Wednesday.
Indonesia, the world’s 10th biggest emitter and fourth most populous country, is one of the few significant emitters yet to submit its climate pledge to the UN, ahead of a global deal due in Paris in December.
Its proposed new goal barely extends the coal exporting nation’s current voluntary emission goal of a 26% cut by 2020, which it offered to increase to 41% with international support.
“Beyond 2020, Indonesia envisions an even bolder commitment to emission reductions,” the document said.
The INDC is due to be circulated among stakeholders ahead of a final decision by mid-September, news agencies Antara and Reuters reported this week.
The draft said Indonesia expects to meet its unconditional commitment without market mechanisms, but added that it supports “fully bilateral, regional and international market mechanisms” to reach the deeper conditional target.
The document said the goal would be met assuming economic growth of 5% a year, a 1% annual increase in population, and while cutting the numbers of Indonesians living in poverty from 11% to 4% by 2025.
DEFORESTATION
The INDC said Indonesia would protect its remaining forests by reducing deforestation and degradation, designating 12.7 million hectares for sustainable use.
But that goal appears to be weaker than a pledge Indonesia made last year to completely halt deforestation by 2030, which was agreed alongside 35 other governments and dozens of other stakeholders in the New York Declaration on Forests.
Indonesia’s overall GHG emissions spiked by as much as a fifth to 1.8 billion tonnes of CO2e between 2000 and 2005 amid massive deforestation, much of it due to logging and clearances for palm oil plantations.
The government has since made efforts to rein this in, declaring a moratorium on the clearing of primary forests and courting $1 billion of REDD+ funding from Norway.
CLEAN AND NEW POWER?
The INDC document said Indonesia “supports a mixed energy use policy, with at least 23% coming from new and renewable energy by 2025”.
The IEA in February said the 23% goal looked “too ambitious” and doubted whether it could be achieved.
The IEA, which advises countries on energy policy, added that Indonesia’s plans to triple its use of coal-fire power generation by 2025 put its climate goals at risk.
As world oil prices have tumbled in the past year, the Indonesian government has moved to scale back electricity and gasoline subsidies and said it plans to do more.
For details on all the INDCs to date, check our INDC Tracker.
By Ben Garside and Stian Reklev – ben@carbon-pulse.com
