By Greenpeace
Japan Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s recent visit to Malaysia and Indonesia highlights the ‘business as usual’ agenda of pushing fossil fuels first, despite just energy transition talks.
Alarmingly, the Asia Zero Emission Community (Azec) Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) is doubling down on fossil fuel dependency, undermining global climate commitments and delaying the transition to a truly sustainable energy future.
According to a Zero Carbon Analytics report, only 11% of 158 MoUs, agreed on during Japan Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s recent visit to Malaysia and Indonesia, involves wind and solar, while 35% focuses on fossil fuel technologies like liquified natural gas, ammonia co-firing to supplement coal power plants, and carbon capture and storage.
This approach not only contradicts the urgent need to phase out fossil fuels, it risks locking Asia into a high-carbon trajectory, threatening the region’s ability to meet its climate goals and safeguard communities from the escalating impacts of the climate crisis. At the same time, it diverts critical investments away from scaling up renewable energy solutions like wind and solar.
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Oil Change International, highlights the International Energy Agency and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s recommendations to avoid new fossil fuel infrastructure and prioritise the use of existing facilities.
However, the Azec partnership continues to promote and finance the development of new fossil fuel infrastructure, which hinders a just energy transition and climate change mitigation.
Japan, Malaysia and Indonesia continue to view fossil fuels as more secure than renewables. Ironically, more investment is required in making technologies such as carbon capture and storage or carbon capture, utilisation and storage viable in retaining the fossil gas as the baseload.
Malaysia
During his visit to Malaysia, Prime Minister Ishiba expressed interest in expediting the joint crediting mechanism, which promotes carbon credit creation through decarbonisation technologies.
Japan has also shown interest in exporting carbon emissions to align with Malaysia’s carbon capture and storage projects, highlighting the growth interest to ensure investments to make these technologies viable in the future.
Increasing the reliance on fossil gas will prompt further oil and gas exploration as reserves deplete. Petronas has already scheduled new well explorations in Langkasuka and the Tun Mustapha Marine Park.
In addition, Japan is eyeing Malaysia’s rare earth industry to ensure a stable and diversified supply as well as to reduce its dependency on China for critical minerals which are essential for high-tech sectors like automotive, electronics and renewable energy.
Indonesia
Indonesia has the highest number of Azec MoUs signed, 43% of the total. The government must seize this momentum to re-evaluate the 27 fossil fuel-related MoUs and redirect these collaborations toward advancing renewable energy transitions in Indonesia.
The commitment also appears to be in stark contrast with Indonesia’s ongoing plans to promote coal captive power plants for its nickel industry.
CREA and Global Energy Monitor’s latest report on Indonesia’s captive coal capacity, following their 2023 report, finds that sizable growth in captive coal is expected to continue, with an estimated total of 11.0GW up to 2026.
The latter approach risks prolonging fossil fuel reliance, undermining the goal of decarbonisation.
If Japan’s support for Indonesia’s transition to clean energy is to be credible, it should also advocate against investments that prolong the use of coal in industries, such as nickel and fossil gas, which could hinder both countries’ environmental commitments in the long term.
Southeast Asian countries like Malaysia and Indonesia explore nuclear energy as a low- carbon technology and baseload alternative under civilian nuclear energy (CNE) initiatives, undermining the risk of nuclear waste mismanagement and environmental risks.
Greenpeace Malaysia’s climate and energy campaigner Hamizah Shamsudeen said: “Prioritising solar and energy efficiency projects are essential to achieving a just energy transition for Malaysia.
“Japan’s support for the country’s decarbonisation and energy security plan, which includes fossil gas as a baseload, primarily serves the economic interests of Japanese corporations seeking to maintain demand for LNG to be driven by short-term economic gains and ultimately results in environmental and social consequences.
“Decarbonisation efforts should focus on adopting greener alternative resources, such as solar energy. To make solar energy more sustainable for energy security, greater efforts should be directed toward enhancing grid systems and adopting energy efficiency measures in existing and new developments.”
Greenpeace Indonesia’s climate and energy campaigner Adila Isfandiari added: “Japan’s commitment to support Indonesia’s energy security and renewable energy development is promising.
“However, Japan’s track record of investments in coal and fossil gas, including support for large-scale projects like the newly operated Jawa-1 combined cycle gas turbine (PLTGU) power plant in Indonesia, raises questions about Japan’s true commitment to supporting energy transition. This facility, which includes an LNG storage and regasification unit, is Southeast Asia’s largest integrated power plant, with a capacity of 1.7 GW.
“Therefore, to ensure meaningful progress, both governments of Japan and Indonesia must steer this collaboration away from practices that could prolong fossil fuel reliance and instead focus on accelerating clean and renewable energy solutions, such as solar power, which is abundant in Indonesia.”
Greenpeace Japan’s energy project manager Hisayo Takada said: “Prime Minister Ishiba has chosen Malaysia and Indonesia as his first overseas destinations in his new post. Visits to these key Southeast Asian countries are also significant with regard to climate change and energy.
“Japan’s drive to build fossil fuel and nuclear power plants, as well as CCS [carbon capture and storage] and CCUS [carbon capture, utilisation and storage] in both countries, traps both countries and Japan in the old regime of digging and burning underground resources and scrambling to lock up hazardous substances.
“Both countries have a number of things in common with Japan: both are surrounded by the sea, have rich natural environments, active volcanoes and seismic activity, and large populations.
“What both countries and Japan need to pursue is a circular, self-sustaining and democratic way of generating energy, ie renewable energy using the sun, wind and heat from the earth, and not one that is fraught with serious accidents and pollution.” – Greenpeace
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