50,000 people petition banks to stop coal finance for PLN
Camilla Perotti, Banks and Coal Campaigner at BankTrack
Apekshita Vashney, Climate Finance Campaigner at Ekō
Camilla Perotti, Banks and Coal Campaigner at BankTrack
Apekshita Vashney, Climate Finance Campaigner at Ekō
A petition signed by over 50,000 people was handed over this week to four major global banks, Deutsche Bank, ING, HSBC, and Standard Chartered, asking them to end finance for Indonesia's state-owned utility company Perusahaan Listrik Negara (PLN). The petition was launched by Ekō, BankTrack, and Trend Asia in February 2025. Specifically, the petitioners demanded that these banks do not underwrite any refinancing of the €500 million bond they underwrote in 2018, which is about to mature in October. (1) However, none of the banks has so far publicly and unequivocally committed to rule out finance for the company.
These banks underwrote most of PLN’s bond issuances between 2012 and 2020. (2) PLN has not offered a bond in dollars or euros since 2020. However, in January 2025, news broke that the company was planning USD bond offerings in 2025 for as much as USD 1.5 billion.
A dirty company
PLN operates most of Indonesia’s coal power stations. Currently, coal power generation accounts for 62% of its total power generation, significantly exceeding its renewable capacity. Apart from generating massive amounts of greenhouse gas emissions, pollution from the plants is linked to an increase in heart and respiratory illnesses in the country, disproportionately affecting children and the elderly.
Air pollution from PLN’s Suralaya coal power complex alone is estimated to cause 2,500 deaths in the Jakarta metropolitan area every year. (3) Yet, PLN is expanding the complex by building the controversial Java 9 and 10 units. PLN does not have any clear retirement plans for its coal power plants, some of which are more than 30 years old. On the contrary, the company plans to add 6.35 GW of new coal capacity by 2034. (4)
A policy issue
Deutsche Bank, HSBC, and Standard Chartered’s coal policies would still allow the banks to underwrite PLN bonds.
ING has a policy in place excluding new finance for companies that are more than 5% reliant on thermal coal, except where this is ringfenced for “green” projects. This policy should rule out underwriting new PLN bonds, but questions remain about possible loopholes in this policy. (5)
Overall, bonds remain a major blind spot in the coal policies of many commercial banks. According to research by Urgewald, ING, Deutsche Bank, and Standard Chartered have all more than tripled their financing for coal companies between 2022 and 2024, largely because of such bond underwriting.
“These banks keep financing coal developers as if science hadn’t told us that no new coal should be developed after 2021 if we wanted a chance to remain below 1.5 degrees of heating. We ask them to take a good look at the impacts on climate and people that PLN’s business is already causing, at the thousands of deaths that have been linked to its coal plants, and make the right choice for once, publicly ruling out any more finance for this destructive company,” said Camilla Perotti, Banks and Coal Campaigner at BankTrack.
“PLN’s continued expansion of coal is an assault on any community’s basic rights to live in a non-toxic, non-deadly environment. PLN is discarding Indonesia’s climate commitments, causing the deaths of tens of thousands of people and putting at risk the future of us all. PLN must urgently move away from coal and provide remedies for the devastation it has already caused. Today, banks have one choice to make: backing PLN and leaving a legacy of public health and environmental crimes or finally showing some leadership and ditching reckless coal operations,” said Apekshita Varshney, Climate Finance Campaigner at Ekō.
“PLN has long been in the dirty energy business, particularly in coal, and the impact of this is now increasingly being felt. If these banks continue to provide financing to PLN, then they are also contributing to the current situation and must take responsibility. The banks must immediately urge their client, PLN, to end its dependence on the coal business and immediately transition to renewable energy,” said Novita Indri, Energy Campaigner at Trend Asia.
Notes for Editors:
-
Details on this transaction and other PLN bonds can be found in the Dirty 30 tracker.
-
See BankTrack, PLN Dodgy Deal profile, finance section.
-
For more details on the impacts caused by PLN’s coal business, see BankTrack, PLN Dodgy Deal profile.
-
Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), Indonesia's RUPTL outlines faster growth in fossil fuel use, downgrades ambition for clean energy (June 2025), p 5 et seq.
-
Questions include whether the policy would still allow underwriting a bond for a non-coal subsidiary of a major coal developer like PLN. BankTrack is seeking clarification on these questions.
-
The delivery of the petition was carried out with the collaboration of Urgewald and London Mining Network.
