@phdthesis{Ordonez2023, author = {Ordonez, Jose Antonio}, title = {The Political economy of coal and renewable energy : case studies on climate and energy policy in Indonesia and India}, doi = {10.26127/BTUOpen-6717}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:co1-opus4-67178}, school = {BTU Cottbus - Senftenberg}, year = {2023}, abstract = {This thesis deals with the energy system transformation of coal-dependent developing countries in the context of climate change mitigation. It departs from the hypothesis that phasing-out the unabated use of coal for power generation, while scaling up carbon-free alternatives, represents a major challenge for coal-endowed developing countries and emerging economies. This challenge is constituted in multiple economic, political and societal determinants for sustained and expanded coal-use. This thesis adopts a political economy perspective and examines those determinants in detail. It focuses on how different societal and political actors are affected the use of coal, and interprets the distributional implications of reforms away from coal as key restrictions for their political feasibility. Given the heterogeneity in the historical, socio-economic, political, and institutional characteristics that different countries exhibit, which are hypothesized to impact on the drivers behind coal-use, this thesis adopts a case-study based approach. It focuses on two large Asian economies, Indonesia and India, as coal-endowed emerging economics with a pivotal relevance in global climate protection efforts. Three main chapters represent the core of this thesis. The first main chapter of this thesis examines the political economy of the power sector and coal mining in Indonesia, focusing on the drivers for the continued use of coal for electricity generation. It presents an expert-interview case study, based on the perspective of 90 expert stakeholder in Indonesia´s energy and climate policy, at national and subnational level. The study identifies key societal and political actors behind Indonesia´s energy- and climate policies driving coal-use, spells out their objectives, and examines how these actor-specific interests' effect on energy and climate policies. The second main chapter of this thesis studies the implications of an Indian energy transition away from coal-use along three dimensions: the distributional impacts towards households, the implications for employment, and the impact on competitiveness of industries. The input-output based, distributional- incidence case study analyses the concentration of impacts for key societal groups affected by a coal phase-out and renewable energy phase-in, and its spatial distribution across Indian states and regions. The third main chapter of this thesis studies the cost-competitiveness of renewable energy alternatives to coal in Indonesia. The energy modelling based analysis shows how the cost-optimal composition of Indonesia´s power sector in coming decades would comprise high shares of coal-fired electricity. The three main chapters of this thesis identify political economy challenges to a transition away from coal, outlining how a successful coal phase-out will require focusing on its context-dependent distributional and political implications.}, subject = {Climate and development; Klimawandel; Politische {\"O}konomie; Kohle; Klima und Entwicklung; Climate change; Political economy; Coal; Indonesien; Indien; Klima{\"a}nderung; Klimaschutz; Kohleausstieg; Politische {\"O}konomie; Energiewende}, language = {en} }