Indonesia decommisions its last-ever coal-fired power plant

The smokestacks went cold this morning. After 15 years of methodical dismantling, Indonesia has shut down the last coal-fired power plant on its grid — a milestone that once seemed impossible for a country that, in 2024, generated nearly 62% of its electricity by burning coal.

The final plant, located on Java, powered down at dawn. Workers who spent years running turbines and hauling ash watched the shutdown ceremony alongside engineers who built the solar arrays that replaced them.

• Indonesia retired more than 50,000 megawatts of coal capacity over 15 years, decommissioning an average of 3 gigawatts per year.
• Renewables now account for 65% of Indonesia’s electricity mix, with solar at 20%, wind at 11%, and geothermal, hydro, and bioenergy making up the rest.
• The coal phase-out arrives a full year ahead of the 2040 target set by President Prabowo Subianto at the 2024 G20 Summit — and positions Indonesia on a trajectory aligned with the global 1.5°C climate target.

What it actually took to get here

Nobody handed Indonesia this outcome. The country built it under pressure, with incomplete funding, shifting political will, and a domestic coal industry that employed hundreds of thousands of people.

In 2024, Ember Energy’s analysis laid out the math with unusual precision: retire 3 gigawatts of coal annually, add 8 gigawatts of renewable capacity each year, and integrate 4 gigawatt-hours of battery storage per year until 2040. Indonesia followed that roadmap, more or less, for a decade and a half — and finished early.

It wasn’t linear. There were years of slower progress, financing gaps, and political backsliding. But the underlying direction held.

Solar did the heavy lifting

In 2023, solar power held a negligible 0.2% of Indonesia’s energy mix. By 2039, it accounts for 20%.

That shift required building solar infrastructure at a pace the country had never attempted. International climate finance, carbon market revenue, and private sector investment all played a role. So did Indonesia’s own recognition that it sits near the equator and receives more sunlight per square meter than almost anywhere on earth.

Battery storage made solar viable around the clock. Indonesia integrated 4 gigawatt-hours of new storage capacity annually — a strategy that the International Energy Agency identified early as essential for grids with high solar penetration. Peak demand hits in the evening, after the sun goes down. Storage solved that problem.

The geothermal sector contributed meaningfully too. Indonesia holds some of the largest geothermal reserves on the planet, and the country finally developed them at scale.

The human cost that couldn’t be ignored

Coal didn’t just generate electricity in Indonesia. It generated livelihoods — in mining towns in Kalimantan, in port cities, in the supply chains that fed the plants.

A just transition required direct investment in coal-dependent provinces. The government worked with international partners and the Asian Development Bank to develop economic diversification plans, retraining programs, and new infrastructure in regions where coal had been the primary employer for generations. Some communities made the transition smoothly. Others are still working through it.

Getting the human side right mattered as much as building the megawatts. Countries that ignored it — that treated energy transition as purely a technical problem — created political instability that set back their own timelines.

What the numbers mean globally

Indonesia was the world’s fifth-largest coal power generator as recently as 2024. Its exit from coal carries weight beyond its own borders.

When a country of 300 million people — one that was still building new coal plants as recently as 2026 — completes a full phase-out a year ahead of schedule, it sends a signal that the transition is achievable even under difficult conditions. Our World in Data tracks electricity transitions globally, and Indonesia’s trajectory now stands as one of the steepest decarbonization curves in the developing world.

The country also emerges from this transition as a potential clean energy exporter. Its geothermal capacity, solar infrastructure, and battery mineral reserves — including nickel, essential for energy storage — position it as a supplier to the broader regional grid.

The work that remains

Shutting down the last coal-fired power plant is a real milestone. It is not the end of Indonesia’s energy story.

Electricity demand continues to grow at roughly 5% per year. Meeting that demand with clean sources requires continued investment in generation, storage, and grid infrastructure. Rural electrification still lags in parts of the archipelago’s outer islands.

And captive coal — the industrial coal plants that powered cement factories, steel mills, and other heavy industry — took years longer to phase out than grid coal. Some of that work continues. The grid is clean. The full economy is not yet.

Indonesia reached a milestone today that its own government once called too ambitious to promise. It promised anyway. Then it built the thing — one year early.