Indonesia shuts down its last coal-fired power plant, ending an era

Story: 2039 C.E.  |  Last updated: January 14, 2026

Note: This is an imagined future story, written as if a projected milestone has occurred. It is based on current trends and evidence, not confirmed events.

The last coal-fired power plant in Indonesia went offline this week, closing a chapter that once defined how the world’s fourth most populous nation kept its lights on. The Suralaya complex in West Java — for decades the largest coal plant in Southeast Asia — was formally decommissioned in a ceremony attended by energy ministers and community leaders from across the archipelago. It marks the end of a fuel source that, as recently as the mid-2020s C.E., supplied more than 60% of Indonesia’s electricity.

The transition did not happen overnight, and it did not happen without friction. But by 2039 C.E., the combination of falling renewable costs, international financing, and a coordinated national policy framework made the final step possible — and, to many observers, inevitable.

Key projections

• Coal phase-out: Indonesia retired its final operating coal plant in 2039 C.E., roughly a decade after coal’s share of the national grid began its steepest decline.
• Renewable energy: Solar, geothermal, and wind now account for more than 80% of Indonesian electricity generation, with geothermal alone providing a stable baseload from the archipelago’s vast volcanic resources.
• Just transition: A nationally coordinated retraining and economic diversification program supported an estimated 200,000 workers in coal-dependent communities across Kalimantan, South Sumatra, and East Java — though advocates note that outcomes have been uneven across regions.

How Indonesia got here

In the mid-2020s C.E., Indonesia was one of the world’s top coal producers and consumers. The idea of a full phase-out by 2039 C.E. was, at the time, treated with skepticism even by sympathetic analysts.

What changed was the economics. Solar panel costs fell below almost any projection made a decade earlier. Indonesia’s equatorial geography — abundant sun, active geothermal belts, and long coastlines suitable for offshore wind — made the country a natural beneficiary of the global renewable build-out. By the early 2030s C.E., new renewable capacity was consistently cheaper to build than keeping aging coal plants running.

International climate finance also played a role that earlier deals had promised but struggled to deliver. The Just Energy Transition Partnership framework, which began as a pledge in the early 2020s C.E., was restructured mid-decade with more concessional terms, faster disbursement, and stronger labor protections — lessons drawn from earlier programs in South Africa and Vietnam.

As renewables crossed 49% of global power capacity in the late 2020s C.E., supply chains matured and local manufacturing of solar components expanded within Indonesia itself, reducing import dependency and creating new industrial jobs in regions that had previously relied on coal mining.

The communities coal left behind — and what replaced it

The human dimension of this transition is complicated. In Kalimantan and South Sumatra, entire towns had organized their economies around coal extraction for generations. For these communities, the phase-out was not simply a policy shift — it was a restructuring of daily life.

Government-backed transition zones offered retraining in renewable energy installation, manufacturing, and agriculture. Some communities embraced the shift. Others felt the programs arrived too slowly and that promises made by national officials outpaced what was actually delivered on the ground.

Indigenous communities, particularly in Kalimantan, report mixed outcomes. Some who had long opposed coal mining on their ancestral lands welcomed the transition. Others found that new solar and geothermal infrastructure brought its own land-use pressures, and that their voices were not always heard in siting decisions. This remains an active area of advocacy and negotiation as of 2039 C.E.

What the grid looks like now

Indonesia’s electricity system in 2039 C.E. looks fundamentally different from the one it replaced. Geothermal energy — drawn from the same volcanic activity that shapes the archipelago’s landscape — now provides stable, around-the-clock power. Indonesia sits atop roughly 40% of the world’s geothermal potential, a resource that went largely untapped for decades due to high upfront development costs.

Utility-scale solar dominates daytime generation, particularly on Java and Sulawesi. Battery storage, much of it manufactured domestically, smooths out overnight demand. A new inter-island transmission backbone — completed in stages between 2030 C.E. and 2037 C.E. — finally knits together a grid that had historically operated as a patchwork of isolated regional systems.

Energy access expanded alongside the transition. Rural electrification, which lagged in remote island communities for decades, accelerated as distributed solar and microgrids proved cheaper than extending centralized infrastructure. By 2038 C.E., Indonesia reported near-universal electricity access for the first time in its history.

What comes next

Decommissioning the last coal plant is a symbolic and practical milestone — but it is not the end of the story. Indonesia still operates a significant petrochemical sector, and natural gas continues to play a bridging role in parts of the grid. Emissions from transport and industry remain targets for the next phase of the country’s climate commitments.

There are also questions about what to do with the physical infrastructure coal leaves behind. The Suralaya site is under consideration for redevelopment as a clean energy research hub, a proposal that has garnered public enthusiasm, though land tenure questions and cleanup costs are unresolved.

What happened in Indonesia carries weight beyond its borders. As one of the most coal-dependent large economies to complete a full phase-out, it offers a template — imperfect, contested, but real — for other nations still in the middle of the same transition. The trajectory analysts at Ember mapped in the 2020s C.E. has, in broad strokes, come to pass.

The lights stayed on. The coal is gone. And the debate about how to do this better, more equitably, more quickly elsewhere in the world is only growing louder.

For comparison, the global picture has shifted dramatically: the International Energy Agency’s tracking of coal-to-clean transitions documented Indonesia as one of the most consequential case studies of the 2030s C.E. The International Renewable Energy Agency’s just transition framework has been cited repeatedly in Indonesia’s own policy documentation. And World Bank energy financing data show Indonesia as one of the top recipients of concessional clean energy capital between 2026 C.E. and 2035 C.E.

Read more

For more on this story, see: Ember Energy — Indonesia coal phase-out analysis

For more from Good News for Humankind, see:

• Renewables now make up at least 49% of global power capacity
• U.K. cancer death rates down to their lowest level on record
• The Good News for Humankind archive on energy

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