Jakarta Air Quality Worsens During Lockdown

In a reversal of a trend seen in other major cities in Southeast Asia, Jakarta’s air quality actually got worse during the traffic-squelching pandemic lockdown. Air quality experts are largely blaming the dozen coal plants that supply the Indonesian megalopolis with power—while killing tens of thousands of city residents annually and delivering poor birth weights to thousands of babies.

In an early June post, the South Asia Globe writes of its efforts to explore how Jakarta’s air quality fared during a regional lockdown that began in early February and was easing in some jurisdictions by mid-May. Citing data from the region’s monthly air quality index (AQI), the Globe calls Jakarta a “notable outlier” in a pattern that showed a clear correlation between the lockdown and cleaner air in 10 other major cities across Southeast Asia.

Home to nearly 10 million people—and only one metro line—Jakarta is infamous for bad traffic. The city did see a significant drop in vehicle use, and a corresponding reduction in nitrogen dioxide (NO2), during its own partial lockdown, which ran between mid-April and early June.

Even so, “while other cities bunkered down under bluer skies, Jakarta’s AQI kept rising, month-on-month, to hit the unhealthy high of 127 in mid-May.” [At 6 p.m. on July 14, Jakarta’s AQI was a terrifying 152.—Ed.]

That the citizens of Jakarta did not even experience the “silver lining” of cleaner air during the otherwise terrible experience of lockdown owes significantly to the fact that their city is surrounded by no less than 12 coal power plants. Isabella Suarez, analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), told the Globe that while agricultural burning outside city limits also likely contributed to Jakarta’s implacably smog-choked skies, the coal plants, which remained fully operational during the lockdown, were the chief culprits.

Coal plants like the ones surrounding Jakarta are key sources of micro-sized PM2.5 pollutants which, because they linger long in the air, can be borne long distances on the wind. They are also easily inhaled, and have been proven to be very harmful to human health, noted Suarez.

In the three years since Greenpeace Indonesia produced its Silent Killer report on the Indonesian capital’s apocalyptic air pollution, four new coal plants have come online nearby. “One of the largest, Java 7 Unit 1, became operational in late 2019 and is over twice as powerful as all renewable energy plants launched that year,” notes the Globe.

The Greenpeace report found a clear correlation between the city’s incredible density of power plants (more of them within a 100-kilometre radius of Jakarta than in any other world capital) and the 10,600 premature deaths and 2,800 low birth weights occurring each year in the region.

The Indonesian government did announce early this year that it plans “to remove coal-fired power plants aged 20 years or older with replacements that use renewable energy instead,” but coal remains Jakarta’s dominant power supplier, at 60%. It is expected to remain so “until at least 2028,” writes the Globe.