In Southeast Asia a coal plant closes when its contracts allow it to, so I plan the energy transition one signature at a time.
I am the chief strategy officer of Lintasari Power Holdings Limited, a fictional power generator headquartered in Singapore and listed on the SGX Mainboard. We own or share 5,980 megawatts of capacity in Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines: 2,320 megawatts of coal, 2,180 of gas and 1,480 of solar and wind. Almost all of it sells under long-term contracts to state-owned utilities and single buyers. In 2025 the group earned revenue of US$2.94 billion and EBITDA of US$780 million. Our largest shareholder, with 38 per cent, is Kelawari Holdings Berhad, a fictional Malaysian state-linked investment company.
My job is to decide, with our chief executive and the board, how a company built on coal contracts becomes one that the region's buyers, lenders and governments still want to deal with in 2040. That brings questions most strategy teams never meet: whether a state buyer will let us close a plant early and who pays when it does, whether a subsea cable to Singapore can survive the politics of two capitals, and whether hydrogen deserves our money yet. I reached them by an unusual road: grid studies in Kuala Lumpur, tariff work at a Malaysian generator, advising lenders who financed coal plants, and building an LNG-to-power project in Indonesia.
The decision that best explains me is one I am still carrying out. In 2024 we agreed to retire our 1,000-megawatt coal station in Johor at the end of 2029, four years before its contract ends. On our own numbers the early date cost shareholders about US$45 million after everything we could recover, and it changes the working lives of 410 people. I recommended it anyway. A coal plant whose closure is negotiated in good time can pay for its replacement and its workforce; one whose closure is imposed later usually pays for neither.
A coal station retired four years early, by contract
Malaysia's single buyer, two groups of lenders and our board agreed the end-2029 closure of the Johor station in August 2024, and the government approved it that December. A concessional refinancing and an avoided US$85 million overhaul recovered about US$95 million of the US$140 million the earlier date cost.
An LNG project stopped before it consumed more
In 2020 the board accepted my recommendation to leave a 1,500 MW LNG-to-power project in central Vietnam whose risks could not be financed. After selling the site rights we wrote off US$29 million, rather than committing the US$120 million the next phase required.
A carbon price inside every investment case
Since 2023 every proposal to our Investment Committee carries a shadow carbon price of US$40 a tonne, rising to US$80 by 2030. It changed the ranking of three of eleven proposals, including two gas peakers we chose not to build.
A minority stake in a cross-border export link
The Selat Hijau consortium, in which we hold 40 per cent beside an Indonesian partner and a Singapore fund, received conditional approval in 2024 to export 1,000 MW of solar-backed power from Indonesia's Riau Islands to Singapore.
Current focus
I am preparing two papers for our board this year. The first asks whether our 1,320-megawatt coal plant in East Java can follow the Johor route, given a contract that runs to 2042 and a buyer whose own plans depend on government finance. The second asks how much more development money Selat Hijau should receive before its cable route, its Indonesian manufacturing commitments and its financing are settled.
Conversations I welcome
I am committed to Lintasari through the Johor closure and the East Java decision, and I am not considering executive moves. I would consider one independent directorship at a company listed in Singapore or Malaysia outside power generation, where experience of transition planning, state shareholders and long contracts would help a Risk or Sustainability Committee. I can give about twenty-five days a year, subject to my board's consent. I also speak occasionally to industry and policy audiences on coal retirement and cross-border power trade.
