Big banks seek to back Indonesia coal retirement

Cleaning up: Smoke from a coal-fired power plant in Indonesia. Hundreds of similar plants power homes and industry across South-East Asia. — Reuters

Jakarta: HSBC Holdings Plc, Standard Chartered Plc (StanChart) and Bank of America Corp (BofA) are among the banks seeking to participate in Indonesia’s first early coal retirement deal, a signal that big lenders are increasingly willing to make the fossil-fuel investments necessary for the global energy transition.

The three banks have proposed to help finance the accelerated closing of the Cirebon-1 coal-fired power station in West Java, according to three people familiar with the process who asked not to be named discussing private deliberations.