Across the globe, the power sector is undergoing a fundamental shift: falling costs of solar, wind, and storage technologies, rising electrification, and the need to cut emissions are transforming how electricity is produced and consumed. For many countries, this means not only modernising their power systems but also transitioning away from unabated coal toward cleaner sources, with potential to deliver many added benefits – emissions reductions, better air quality and more reliable and affordable energy. Yet delivering this transition remains a challenge. Many Southeast Asian countries, where coal still represents 44% of the electricity mix, are making notable strides to reduce coal dependence but still face significant challenges in accelerating the transition. These include meeting rising energy demand with clean power, providing viable economic alternatives for coal-dependent communities and workers and deciding what to do with their young and generally still profitable coal fleet. These conditions create barriers to coal-to-clean replacement, even as economic factors and regulations (e.g., pollution regulations) increasingly favour clean technologies.

A year ago, the Coal Transition Commission (CTC) published “Accelerating Coal-to-Clean Energy Transitions”, outlining key steps that countries and partners can take to enable a just coal-to-clean transition. In particular, the report highlighted the need to understand how and when to deploy repurposed coal plants for flexibility, consolidate lessons from early coal-to-clean transition projects, and support countries in establishing pipelines of plants suitable for retirement or repurposing.

At COP30, the Commission will launch two new reports that directly address these priorities: ‘From Flex to Phase-Out’ and ‘Growing the Pipeline of Coal-to-Clean Projects’. The event will start by presenting the key recommendations from the reports alongside the experiences of national governments, financial institutions and utilities in implementing planning, policy and regulatory solutions. It will also showcase Indonesia’s leadership in developing the Roadmap for Energy Transition in the Electricity Sector and its practical work in assessing the feasibility of coal-to-clean transition projects. Through the discussion, participants will explore concrete actions to create the enabling conditions needed for coal retirement and flexibility, identify near-term opportunities for scaling up coal retirement, and examine pathways to advance the innovative finance mechanisms needed to unlock coal-to-clean transition projects in complex markets.