Twenty billion dollars… This is the sum that a group of rich countries and international institutions have pledged to pay to Indonesia, the fourth most populous country in the world, to reduce its dependence on coal, from which it derives 62% of its electricity production.

The United States, France, Canada and the United Kingdom are among the contributors to this investment plan, announced by the White House on Tuesday on the sidelines of the summit of the major G20 economies on the Indonesian island of Bali.

After South Africa… Indonesia

This Just Transition Partnership (JETP) is not the first of its kind between a developing country and a coalition of rich countries.

Already last year, during COP26 in Glasgow, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, the United States and the European Union announced that they were putting 8.5 billion dollars on the table to finance the transition. energy of South Africa, another country highly dependent on coal.

This new JETP will enable Indonesia to advance its carbon neutrality objective by ten years, to 2050. The funding obtained over a period of three to five years is shared equally between public and private, in the form of aid , credit guarantees or private investments.

"A very strong signal, not just in the Pacific"

The principle of this mechanism was launched Monday at a ceremony in Bali.

It was presented by Indonesian Finance Minister Sri Muliani Indrawati as "an extraordinary step" sending "a very strong signal not only in the Pacific but around the world".

"Indonesia is home to nearly 300 million people, tens of millions of whom are exposed to natural disasters due to climate change, especially those who live in low-lying regions", in this archipelago of 17,000 islands, he said. she pointed out during the ceremony.

Several coal-fired power plants in the crosshairs

She said she hoped that her country could thus "accelerate the transition to renewable energies", anticipating the closure of coal-fired power plants, while acknowledging that it was "not easy", in particular because of the costs.

According to her, the Indonesian government has identified several coal-fired power plants that can be shut down representing a total output of 15 gigawatts.

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