News
Sector analysis across waste and pollution, energy and climate, and sustainable resources.
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Indonesia opens mining to cooperatives, leaving reclamation guarantees an open question
Government Regulation 39/2025 now lets village cooperatives hold mining concessions of up to 2,500 hectares, and the government has just extended cooperative management to community oil wells too. Neither announcement has said how these smaller operators will meet the same reclamation guarantee rules large miners are being pressed to prove this year.
By Sirkularium Editorial Team, 9 min read
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Coordinating minister seeks presidential decree to clear Indonesia's waste mountains
Zulkifli Hasan, Coordinating Minister for Food Affairs, told a civil society dialogue in Wonosobo he has asked President Prabowo Subianto for a decree giving his office cross-agency authority to resolve waste piles in priority cities by 2028.
By Sirkularium Editorial Team, 8 min read
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Indonesia and Singapore sign a cross-border power deal, then get stuck on price
Jakarta and Singapore signed 26 agreements on July 6, including a mandate for Danantara to export up to 3.4 gigawatts of clean electricity, but the deal cannot close until the two governments agree on a tariff.
By Sirkularium Editorial Team, 8 min read
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Indonesia issues its first forestry carbon credits under a new national registry
The Ministry of Forestry approved 31.7 million tons of forestry carbon credits for four projects and launched a national registry to track them, moving Indonesia's carbon market from framework to first transaction.
By Sirkularium Editorial Team, 7 min read
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What Jambi's illegal gold mining would cost under Indonesia's own valuation rules
Indonesia already has a standard method for putting a rupiah figure on mining damage, the one that valued the PT Timah case at Rp271 trillion. Nobody has yet applied it to the illegal gold mining tearing into Kerinci Seblat National Park.
By Sirkularium Editorial Team, 10 min read
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Indonesia moves to make plastic producers fund waste management
A near-final ministerial regulation would require close to 10,000 large factories to finance packaging waste management through independent recovery organizations, shifting the cost away from the state budget.
By Sirkularium Editorial Team, 8 min read
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Coal graft probe implicates itself in the blackouts hitting a coal-rich island
Indonesian police have opened a formal corruption investigation into coal suppliers to state power plants, alleging fraud that regulators say helped trigger rolling blackouts now stretching from Sumatra to Kalimantan.
By Sirkularium Editorial Team, 9 min read
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Kepulauan Seribu advances household waste sorting to 59 percent
Jakarta's outer-islands regency reports source sorting has reached 59 percent across eleven inhabited islands, backed by working organic-to-feed and automated sorting pilots that give the province's open dumping transition a real proof point.
By Sirkularium Editorial Team, 7 min read
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State miner MIND ID cuts waste 11 percent as circular practices take hold
Indonesia's state mining holding reused, recycled, or recovered more than a million tonnes of residual material in 2025, turning nickel slag and gold tailings into construction inputs while overall waste generation fell 11.3 percent.
By Sirkularium Editorial Team, 8 min read
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Bali breaks ground on its first waste-to-energy plant
The Denpasar Raya facility pairs a national strategic designation with a signed power offtake agreement, a combination that addresses financing risk for waste-to-energy projects.
By Sirkularium Editorial Team, 5 min read
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Indonesia sets a firm 2027 deadline to end open dumping at landfills
Environment Minister Jumhur Hidayat tightened a phased 2027-2028 target into a single hard deadline, with 369 of the country's 485 landfills still needing to convert to controlled or sanitary systems.
By Sirkularium Editorial Team, 7 min read
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Indonesia compresses its 100 GW solar target to three years
Blackouts linked to coal supply shortages pushed the government to shorten its solar build-out timeline, reframing renewables as an energy security measure.
By Sirkularium Editorial Team, 5 min read
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ASEAN puts a just energy transition at the centre of 2026
With the Philippines chairing the bloc, a just and inclusive transition has become the headline theme, set against CBAM and rising data-centre demand.
By Sirkularium Editorial Team, 5 min read
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Indonesia sets a 53 percent waste handling target for 2026
The government wants more than half of national waste properly managed this year, a marker on the road to a circular economy.
By Sirkularium Editorial Team, 5 min read
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Water monitoring gap puts Indonesian nickel under scrutiny
Only about a quarter of nickel refiners in Indonesia monitor water pollution, well below the global rate, raising pressure on the sector.
By Sirkularium Editorial Team, 5 min read
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Producer responsibility moves to the centre of Indonesia's plastic strategy
Extended producer responsibility is becoming the main instrument to hold manufacturers accountable for post-consumer packaging.
By Sirkularium Editorial Team, 5 min read
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Indonesia's carbon registry nears full launch
A national carbon registry due to be fully operational by mid-2026 gives the country's carbon market a shared foundation.
By Sirkularium Editorial Team, 5 min read
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Pressure builds for a more responsible critical minerals supply chain
As Indonesia leans on nickel downstreaming, analysts push for stronger safeguards so the energy transition does not create new harm.
By Sirkularium Editorial Team, 5 min read
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Tailings and water management move up the ESG agenda
Indonesia's PROPER ratings and its sustainable finance taxonomy are pushing tailings and water handling from afterthought to priority.
By Sirkularium Editorial Team, 5 min read
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Solar and storage move to the front of Indonesia's grid plans
Hybrid solar-plus-storage is drawing serious interest as Indonesia shifts from an emissions-heavy system toward renewables.
By Sirkularium Editorial Team, 5 min read
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Updated waste to energy rules link the circular economy and clean power
A revised framework for waste to energy is being read as a milestone for both waste management and the clean energy transition.
By Sirkularium Editorial Team, 5 min read
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B50 biodiesel push tests the limits of palm-based fuel
Indonesia is promoting a 50 percent palm oil blend for diesel, a move with real energy security appeal and real land-use questions.
By Sirkularium Editorial Team, 5 min read
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Indonesia named as a market for improving informal waste workers' lives
A global initiative has picked Indonesia as its second market to support the informal waste sector that underpins much of the country's recycling.
By Sirkularium Editorial Team, 4 min read
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Nickel downstreaming keeps value at home but raises the governance bar
Processing more nickel domestically has boosted Indonesia's role in the battery chain, and sharpened questions about how the gains are governed.
By Sirkularium Editorial Team, 5 min read