Indonesia's coal export ban, seen from a Philippine boiler house

On the last day of 2021 Indonesia announced that no coal would leave the country in January. Its state utility had run its stockpiles down, and the government chose to keep the coal at home until they were rebuilt. Exports resumed in stages from the second week of the month, but for a Philippine buyer the point had been made: the fuel that generates more than half of the country's electricity is bought from one neighbour, on that neighbour's terms.

Compiled in September 2026 from the releases of the time, with the revisions the agencies have published since. Nothing here is a forecast.

Where the coal comes from

The Philippines mines some coal of its own, mostly in Semirara, and imports the rest. Most of the imports come from Indonesia, because the ships are short and the grades suit the boilers that were built for them. In 2021 coal supplied more than half of the country's gross generation. A ban on that trade is not a price event; it is a supply event, and a stockpile of two or three weeks is what stands between a plant and a shutdown.

What the price was already doing

Thermal coal had opened the year around 170 dollars a tonne, more than double its level twelve months earlier, and the ban pushed it higher before it was lifted. A month later the invasion of Ukraine took it higher still. A plant that had budgeted its 2022 fuel in the autumn of 2021 had the wrong number by the end of January.

The industrial boiler in this

The grid took the headlines, but the same coal fires industrial boilers in cement, food, textiles and paper across Luzon and the Visayas. Those sites carry smaller stockpiles than a power station and buy through traders rather than on term contracts. In a supply squeeze they are last in the queue.

What a residue changes

A site that burns rice husk, bagasse, coconut shell or wood waste did not read the announcement. Its fuel arrives from within a few kilometres, on a contract with a mill or a farm, in pesos. That is the case for biomass in one sentence, and January 2022 made it without any help from us.

If your site runs a fuel-fired boiler or produces an organic residue, an energy and waste audit puts your own numbers against this. Tell us about your site and an engineer replies with the data we need. The figures behind each quarter are in the quarterly market brief.