The promise has been repeated countless times at international forums. Indonesia, Viet Nam, the Philippines, and Thailand have all signed energy transition commitments, received billions of dollars in assistance, and drafted roadmaps toward clean energy.
Yet on the ground, Southeast Asia became the world’s third-largest coal-consuming region in 2023, overtaking the United States, while its coal consumption continued to grow by nearly 8 percent in 2024. Promises and reality are moving in opposite directions.
Power Plants Still Too Young to Shut Down
The most common argument used by Southeast Asian countries to delay coal plant retirements is the relatively young age of their power plant fleets. And the numbers do support that narrative, at least for now.
Southeast Asia has around 106 GW of active coal-fired power capacity, with the average plant age standing at only about 13 years as of 2023. Indonesia and Viet Nam operate the largest fleets, at more than 45 GW and 25.8 GW respectively.
A power plant that has only been operating for 13 years has not yet recovered its investment costs. Shutting it down early would mean major losses for investors and state-owned electricity companies.
Research published in the journal Energy Strategy Reviews estimates that total losses from stranded assets could reach between US$85 billion and US$106 billion by 2060 if the Paris Agreement targets are fully implemented. If planned coal projects continue to be built, that figure could rise to between US$100 billion and US$123 billion.
But the “too young” argument is gradually losing its footing.
Analysis by Global Energy Monitor shows that the average age of ASEAN coal-fired power plants will reach 28 years by 2040, approaching the global average retirement age of 36 years. In other words, retiring these plants before 2040 would already be financially feasible under the right policy framework.
Transition Funds Stuck on Paper
The world has not stood still in the face of this situation. International financing mechanisms were specifically designed to help the region escape the coal trap.
The most ambitious among them is the Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP). Indonesia signed a US$20 billion JETP deal on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Bali in November 2022. Viet Nam and the Philippines later followed with similar schemes.
Three years later, the results remain far from satisfactory. Of the US$20 billion pledged to Indonesia, only around US$3.1 billion, or 14.5 percent, has actually been approved for disbursement.
The latest JETP projections state that fossil fuels will still supply 53 percent of Indonesia’s installed power capacity by 2030, with coal alone accounting for 30 percent. Even the original targets have already been scaled back.
Even the most closely watched projects have collapsed. The plan for the early retirement of the Cirebon-1 coal-fired power plant in Indonesia, one of the flagship pilot projects under the JETP framework, was canceled at the end of 2025. The slow implementation has been driven by regulatory barriers, complex contractual structures, and difficulties in mobilizing suitable financing.
The money exists, but the road toward full disbursement remains steep.
Coal Is Not Just Energy, but Political Economy
Behind the technical figures lies a deeper force that makes the transition so difficult: coal is embedded within the region’s political and economic structure.
In Indonesia, coal serves as the backbone of the nickel industry, which has become a central pillar of the government’s downstream industrialization policy. In 2023, coal supplied half of ASEAN’s electricity and met 30 percent of industrial energy demand, including the surge in Indonesia’s nickel production.
Shutting down coal-fired power plants is therefore not merely a matter of replacing energy infrastructure, but of reshaping the industrial foundations of the manufacturing sector currently being built.
ASEAN generated only 26 percent of its electricity from clean energy sources in 2024, far below the global average of 40 percent. Despite the region’s enormous solar potential, the share of solar power in the electricity mix barely moved, rising from 3.1 percent in 2021 to just 3.2 percent in 2024.
This is not because the technology is unavailable or uneconomical, but because transmission infrastructure, investment regulations, and entrenched interests within the coal sector continue to slow change.
The region is not unaware of the risks. But between awareness and action lies a gap filled with long-term contracts, unpaid power plant debts, industrial dependence, and transition financing that has moved far more slowly than promised.
As long as these issues are not addressed simultaneously, the promises made on global stages will continue to collide with realities on the ground.
