Earlier this year, citizens of Jakarta filed a lawsuit against the city government, the governors of West Java and Banten, and the central Indonesian government. Their demand? That elected officials address rising air pollution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe government needs to accept that Jakarta\u2019s air quality is already bad, and develop a programme to target air pollution,\u201d said Fajri Fadhillah, a legal assistant with the Indonesian Center for Environmental Law, which is supporting the citizens\u2019 lawsuit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The lawsuit comes just months after a report<\/a> from AirVisual IQ showed that in 2018 Jakarta had the worst air pollution of any city in Southeast Asia, ranking just ahead of Vietnam\u2019s Hanoi. Not far behind the two capitals were several Thai cities. All of the \u201ctop\u201d cities had average daily levels of the most dangerous air pollution \u2013 PM2.5 \u2013 well above standards set by the World Health Organization (WHO).<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s a common story across the region. As air pollution worsens, urban residents put more pressure on governments to address a key source \u2013 coal-fired power plants. These are perhaps the early signs of an air pollution movement that could impact the energy future of a region where energy demand is soaring<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf you look at what\u2019s happened in other Asian countries \u2013 Japan, Korea, China (and even in Europe) \u2013 concerns about air pollution have led them to require emissions controls to be installed,\u201d said Lauri Myllyvirta, an expert on coal and air pollution with Greenpeace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Coal-fired power plants are a key source of adverse health impacts from air pollution across the region, according to a report<\/a> published in Environmental Science and <\/em>Technology <\/em>in 2017. The report also found that, if all planned plants are built, excess deaths in Southeast Asia would rise from the current roughly 20,000 a year to nearly 70,000 by 2030.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The largest investors in coal-fired power plants in Southeast Asia are Chinese banks. According to a January 2019 report<\/a> from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, these institutions have invested or committed more than US$5.5 billion to develop over 6,000 megawatts of coal-fired capacity in Indonesia, US$3.6 billion for 13,300 megawatts in Vietnam, and lower but still significant amounts in the Philippines and Cambodia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It’s not just China. South Korea and Japan<\/a> are also investing in large-scale coal plants in Southeast Asia, notably in Vietnam and Indonesia. Currently, nearly every country in the region has weak emissions control standards for power plants. In Indonesia, Greenpeace estimates that current standards allow for new plants to emit as much as 20 times the sulphur dioxide of new plants in China. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Similarly, in the Philippines, limits for sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides<\/a> and particulate matter are 20 to 50 times above European or Chinese standards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The fact that coal plants do not have to invest in costly scrubbers or other pollution-mitigation technologies makes them much cheaper to build. But if growing concerns about air pollution force governments to bring standards more in line with those in the United States, Europe or China, it could have a dramatic impact on costs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTo build a power plant where the economics are based on those plants not having to install emissions control, that\u2019s a very risky bet,\u201d said Myllyvirta. <\/p>\n\n\n\n A model for how this could impact the coal industry in Southeast Asia comes from its main funder. In the 1990s and 2000s, China\u2019s rush to meet rapidly growing energy demands led to a flood of coal power station construction \u2013 at one time, the country was opening one a week. These had very low emission standards, which led to horrific air pollution in the late 2010s, dubbed the \u2018airpocalypse\u2019. The result was a swift change in public perceptions of coal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cUp to that point, there was a sense that coal was the mainstay of energy and electricity, and it was going to grow for decades,\u201d said Myllyvirta. \u201cSuddenly, it became possible and even desirable to think about how to reduce reliance on coal.\u201d Coal plant openings in China slowed earlier this decade, defying global expectations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Myllyvirta thinks that something similar could happen in Southeast Asia. If it does, Jakarta would likely be at the forefront. Four power plants are planned, which together would encircle the capital region. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey\u2019re not even requiring those plants to put in even basic emissions controls,\u201d said Myllyvirta. \u201cIt\u2019s insane, especially if you think about the 20 million people in Greater Jakarta who will be exposed to that pollution.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Thailand, which has plans for over 3,000 megawatts of capacity, weeks of record air pollution<\/a> earlier this year caused widespread school closures and the temporary shutdown of coal power plants. Initially, the pollution only affected the capital, Bangkok, but in more recent weeks the Chiang Mai region in the north has been hit hardest. Petitions on Change.org calling for action to reduce pollution have attracted tens of thousands of signatories<\/a>, making them among the platform\u2019s most popular campaigns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hanoi is facing a similar problem to Jakarta, accentuated by its location in a natural basin that traps dirty air. Media and public awareness of pollution is rising, according to Vo Thi Xuan Quyen, communication manager at the Green Innovation and Development Centre, an NGO based in the city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Over the past three years, there has been \u201cdramatically growing public awareness about the link between air pollution and health, especially in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City\u201d said Quyen, citing media reports, online discussion and public polling<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the challenges that Jakarta, Hanoi and other cities in the region face is that public perceptions of the causes and impacts of air pollution are often biased. Earlier this year, Vital Strategies, a non-profit based in Washington DC, released a report<\/a> on air pollution perceptions in South and Southeast Asia based on news coverage and social media conversations from 2015 to 2018. They found that, despite its central role, coal does not get enough attention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhen looking at perceived sources, we found that industrial emissions, or power plants, do not show up as a big source,\u201d said Aanchal Mehta, communications lead at Vital Strategies and an author of the report. \u201cVehicular emissions is the predominant source [mentioned] \u2026 though not necessarily the most important source, especially from a public health perspective.\u201d It is difficult to gauge what percentage of air pollution comes from coal power plants and what from vehicles. While burning coal has been considered the number one cause<\/a> of air pollution-related deaths in China, a study<\/a> by the European Commission found traffic to be the biggest cause in South and Southeast Asia. Whatever journalists and members of the public believe the cause, they tend to concentrate on acute<\/em> symptoms like itchy eyes and breathing difficulties, according to the Vital Strategies research. Only 5% of media reports mentioned the far more life-threatening chronic<\/em> impacts of particulate matter pollution, which include lung cancer and heart disease.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The citizens filing their lawsuit in Jakarta, called the Coalition for Clean Air Initiative, are planning active public education and engagement efforts around the city. As for the lawsuit, they expect an initial decision later this year. But they are almost certain that, if it is favourable, the government will appeal it all the way to the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n\n\n\nChina cashing in on weak emission controls<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
To build a power plant where the economics are based on those plants not having to install emissions control, that\u2019s a very risky bet<\/blockquote>Lauri Myllyvirta, Greenpeace<\/cite><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
Is Southeast Asia heading for its own \u2018airpocalypse\u2019?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The seeds of a clean air movement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n