Jakarta, 22 August 2025 — The Annual Indonesia Green Industry Summit (AIGIS) 2025 continued with Green Talks Panel 5, themed “Retaining Learning from the World: Benchmarking Industrial Decarbonization Practices for Adaptive Transformation.” The session highlighted lessons from international experiences with Emissions Trading Systems (ETS) and their relevance for Indonesia’s decarbonization journey.

The discussion was moderated by Dr. Johannes Anhorn, GIZ Indonesia Lead Industry Decarbonization, and featured distinguished speakers:

  • Sander Happaerts, Green and Digital Counsellor at the EU Delegation to Indonesia and Brunei Darussalam, and the EU Mission to ASEAN
  • Zhao Xiaolu, Senior Director of Climate, Environmental Defense Fund
  • Ivana Dimitrova, Southeast Asia Energy and Industrial Decarbonisation Lead, UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (UK FCDO)
  • Deepak Krishnan, Deputy Director, Energy Program, WRI India

European Union: ETS as the “Backbone of Climate Transition”

Opening the discussion, Sander Hapartz outlined the EU’s two-decade experience with its ETS.
“In the European Union, the ETS has been in place since 2005. By now we have around 20 years of experience in emissions trading and carbon pricing. The ETS has in those 20 years really evolved into being what we call the backbone of our entire climate transition in Europe,” he stated.

Hapartz emphasized that the ETS, covering 36% of EU emissions across power, industry, and transport sectors, has already reduced emissions by 47% in participating sectors while the EU economy grew by 70%. “We have achieved the decoupling of economic growth and carbon emissions,” he concluded.

United Kingdom: Certainty and Predictability

Ivana Dimitrova highlighted the UK’s transition from the EU ETS to its independent system post-Brexit.
“In the UK, we have a net zero target by 2050. After we exited the EU ETS, we said, OK, we have to go faster in terms of limiting emissions… By 2030, you will go from 156 million tonnes of CO2 to around 50 million tonnes of CO2,” she explained.

She underscored the importance of policy predictability: “If I could summarize maybe the lessons, certainty and predictability by taking a long-term horizon and giving indication of what the trajectory of emission looks like 10, even 12 years ahead.”

China: Building Capacity and Policy Infrastructure

Representing China’s perspective, Lulu Liu described the relatively new but rapidly growing ETS, launched in 2021. Covering over 8 billion tonnes of CO2 annually across power, steel, aluminium, and cement, China has become the world’s largest carbon market.

She stressed the critical role of domestic capacity: “When we started to work this thing out in China around 15 years ago… there was almost zero local capacity. But you really need to support local expertise, like professors, think tanks, industries. They will be your major community domestically to help the country come up with the solution that’s really suitable.”

India: A Rate-Based Approach

Deepak Krishnan shared India’s preparations to launch its national ETS in 2026, building on the existing “Perform, Achieve, and Trade” scheme for energy efficiency. Unlike a cap-and-trade model, India’s ETS will be rate-based, with sectoral performance benchmarks.
“This ensures that if there are economic upheavals, you do not impose stringent requirements that could burden industries. Instead, you adjust the benchmarks while still pushing decarbonization,” he explained.

Lessons for Indonesia

The panel concluded that capacity building, policy predictability, and flexible design are essential in shaping effective carbon markets. The discussion also addressed the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), the UK’s move towards CCS integration, and China’s rapid scaling of voluntary carbon markets.

Summarizing the session, Dr. Johannes Anhorn noted: “The basic fundamentals are capacity development, institutional building, predictability, and clarity in governance around ETS. These lessons show what Indonesia can learn from global experiences to shape its own carbon market.”

The session reaffirmed AIGIS 2025 as a premier platform for knowledge exchange, enabling Indonesia to draw from international best practices while charting its path towards industrial decarbonization and global competitiveness.