South Korea faces a public reckoning for financing coal plants in Indonesia
"South Korea faces a public reckoning for financing coal plants in Indonesia", 15 April 2021
The coastal town of Suralaya in Indonesia’s West Java province has eight coal-fired power generating units in its vicinity, which residents blame for respiratory ailments and declining fish catches.
South Korean public financial institutions are financing the expansion of the Suralaya facility through the construction of two new units that will be built by South Korean firm Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction and operated by a power company partly owned by a South Korean public utility.
Support for the project is ongoing, despite South Korea’s own domestic transition away from coal power and attempts by some lawmakers to bar public funds from being directed to the coal industry.
Activists view the South Korean government’s support for the project as an attempt to prop up the ailing Doosan, and to boost its ties with countries in Southeast and South Asia amid tensions with China. [...]