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Trend Asia challenges PT PLN's claim that biomass co-firing facilitates an energy transition and reduces emissions. The report argues that the massive land requirements for energy plantation forests (HTE) to supply wood pellets would lead to significant deforestation, resulting in net carbon emissions rather than reductions. It finds that biomass has become a complement to, rather than a substitute for, coal, with total coal consumption continuing to rise.

The research examines the interaction between local flow pollution and global stock pollution, specifically focusing on abatement activities that can target one or both. By comparing symmetric and asymmetric internalization scenarios, the authors demonstrate that the degree of internalization affects the capital-abatement ratio and long-run pollution stocks. The paper argues that achieving a first-best global welfare optimum requires two distinct policy instruments—such as taxes on both local and global pollutants—and that in asymmetric cases, subsidizing pollution reduction is superior to subsidizing abatement because the latter fails to correct for negative externalities from capital accumulation.

The document details the calculations for the Greenhouse Development Rights (GDRs) calculator, a tool designed to explore burden-sharing for climate change. It establishes a methodology that uses the individual as the unit of analysis, assuming lognormal income distributions within countries. The paper defines how to calculate individual and national 'capacity' (financial ability to pay) and 'responsibility' (based on emissions), which are then combined into a Responsibility-Capacity Indicator (RCI) to allocate a global tax. It also describes the use of the Suits index to measure the progressivity of this tax system on a global scale.