One Country’s Dream of EV-Driven Prosperity Helps Fuel a Coal Binge Instead

A few years ago, Indonesia set out to turn its treasure trove of nickel into an electric-car manufacturing boom.

It imposed a sweeping ban on the export of raw nickel. That meant that companies wanting to tap the world’s largest source of the mineral—used in the most powerful type of EV batteries—would have to build smelters in Indonesia. Officials bet that factories to make EV batteries and entire electric cars would also follow, spawning end-to-end supply chains close to the mineral bounty.

The smelters came, and Indonesia’s nickel industry witnessed explosive growth. But powering it is a coal binge that is throwing off the country’s climate goals. And Indonesians are still waiting for EV makers to lay down production lines.

As President Joko Widodo prepares to leave office this year after a decade—the most he can serve—he is exhorting his potential successors to stick with the policy that is at the centre of his economic legacy. Indonesia holds presidential elections on Feb. 14, and a new leader will take charge in October.

Widodo has cast his plan, referred to in economist-speak as downstreaming, as the answer to the question of how Indonesia will become a rich nation. He says the country is reversing a 400-year pattern dating back to colonial times of being exploited for its natural resources and getting little in return. He has prodded other developing nations to follow its lead.

Last year, officials escorted delegations from mineral-rich Papua New Guinea and the Democratic Republic of Congo to one of Indonesia’s largest nickel industrial parks to show them the scale of Indonesia’s achievements. New Chinese-built smelters dot the archipelago. The value of Indonesia’s nickel exports is up four times since 2019 to around $33 billion.

Not everyone believes the silver metal is a silver bullet.

Nickel smelters have led to a surge in coal use, with new coal plants coming up at a time when the world is trying to phase out the fossil fuel. A January report by Climate Rights International, a U.S. environmental group, said that a single nickel-focused industrial park located on eastern Indonesia’s Maluku islands will burn more coal than Spain or Brazil when it is fully operational.

“We are sacrificing the environment and society, while at the same time getting limited profits for the country,” Muhaimin Iskandar, a vice-presidential candidate in the coming election, said during a televised debate with his political opponents.

Other candidates have pledged to carry forward the president’s nickel policies, including the front-runner for president, Prabowo Subianto, who has said it is much better to export electric-vehicle batteries than raw nickel.

The “dirty nickel” reputation is threatening the very economic opportunities Indonesia covets. In October, nine U.S. senators signed a letter opposing a proposed free-trade agreement to source critical minerals from Indonesia, citing environmental and safety concerns. Without a free-trade deal, EV batteries with substantial quantities of Indonesia-processed nickel won’t be eligible for a major U.S. tax credit.

That makes the country’s nickel less attractive to Western EV makers, who are already battling questions from green groups about the environmental fallout of the country’s sprawling nickel operations.

In a sign of the growing unease, a deputy director for batteries and critical materials at the U.S. Energy Department, Ashley Zumwalt-Forbes, voiced concern in a LinkedIn post last month about what she called the grip of dirty Indonesian nickel on the market. Indonesia accounts for half the global nickel supply, up from a quarter in 2018.

The problems with nickel are also pushing EV makers to rework car batteries and go nickel-free. A lithium-iron-phosphate alternative is gaining traction, though it remains less powerful than batteries containing nickel.

Then there is the question of whether the policy is taking Indonesia toward Widodo’s goal of downstreaming—that is, a shift to higher-value manufacturing. Widodo has long said the endgame isn’t localising nickel processing but rather attracting EV and battery factories. Anything less, he says, could put Indonesia on the same track as some commodity-rich Latin American economies that have languished.

But so far, EV makers haven’t rushed into Indonesia. Tesla, which Widodo has assiduously courted, including on a 2022 trip to Texas to meet with founder Elon Musk, hasn’t shown any signs it plans to set up a factory in the country. No other Western automakers have built EV factories either, though General Motors has a stake in one China-based automaker producing electric cars in Indonesia. Some, like Ford, have made deals to tie up nickel supply.

Korean automaker Hyundai has since 2021 operated one of Indonesia’s only EV factories, focused on the domestic market. The unit can produce 150,000 vehicles a year, but made fewer than 9,500 in 2022 and 2023. Hyundai and Korea’s LG expect to begin producing battery cells at a plant in West Java this year.

Automakers generally look to set up battery and EV plants in the markets where people are already buying electric cars. That puts Indonesia, where few consumers have switched from combustion-engine vehicles, at a disadvantage. The country has a limited charging network and gasoline is heavily subsidised.

Indonesian policymakers who believe the country’s nickel bounty gives it leverage over carmakers are mistaken, said Tom Lembong, a former trade minister under Widodo. He pointed to the growth of nickel-free batteries as a warning against betting big on nickel.

Lembong, who is advising presidential candidate Anies Baswedan—whose ticket advocates focusing on promoting labor-intensive industries—said Indonesia has made limited progress moving up the value chain.

“The irony about this is they call it downstreaming, but we’re still very upstream,” he said.

Septian Hario Seto, a senior Indonesian official involved in nickel policymaking, acknowledged that EV battery and car factories have been slower to come than nickel smelters. The government has brought new regulations to address that, he said, such as one that makes it easier for EV makers to import cars into Indonesia on the condition they later build a factory.

Last month, Chinese EV giant BYD said it would begin car sales in Indonesia, and break ground on a manufacturing unit later this year.

Overall, Seto said the nickel policy has been successful, boosting economic growth in less-developed eastern regions where the nickel is found, and providing jobs and tax revenue. The government has taken steps to limit environmental degradation, such as by banning companies from jettisoning mining waste into the ocean, and will try to bring hydropower projects online as an alternative to coal, he said.

Cullen Hendrix, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, D.C., said there are two ways to assess Indonesia’s industrial policy.

“It’s been successful at driving foreign investment and building nickel processing capacity,” he said. “So far it hasn’t achieved the fully integrated mine-to-EV battery assembly to which it aspires.”

The best financial advice many Australians are receiving right now is not coming from licensed advisers charging by the hour. It is coming through a phone screen, in the ten minutes between work and dinner, from creators who have built credibility the hard way: by being right, being transparent, and being specific in a space where vagueness has always been the easy default.

This is not a ranking by follower count. Follower count is a measure of distribution, not of quality. What follows is a ranking by substance — credentials, accuracy, community depth, and the quality of what an audience actually learns from following these accounts. The distinction matters, because the Australians acting on this content are making real financial decisions with real money.

1- Queenie Tan – Corporate Authorised Representative; Co-Founder & Director, Invest With Queenie & Billroo

There are finance influencers who talk about building wealth, and there are those who document it in real time with receipts. Queenie Tan belongs firmly in the second category. Starting from a $400-per-week income, Tan built her net worth past $1 million while publishing the actual numbers — income, savings rate, investment decisions — for an audience of more than 400,000 across platforms.

She is a Corporate Authorised Representative, co-founder of the personal finance app Billroo, and the author of a book that has become a practical reference for young Australians navigating ETFs, superannuation and property. What separates her from the crowded field of money educators is precision: she does not talk in principles when she can talk in percentages.

2- Alan Kohler – Editor-in-Chief, Eureka Report; Editor-in-Chief, InvestSMART Group; ABC News finance presenter, host of Inside Business.

If Queenie Tan represents the new wave of personal finance creators, Alan Kohler represents something the new wave will spend decades trying to build: institutional credibility that has survived multiple economic cycles. As Editor-in-Chief of the Eureka Report and InvestSMART Group, and a decades-long presence on ABC News, Kohler has spent more than thirty years making financial analysis accessible without dumbing it down.

His coverage of RBA decisions, market movements and economic policy is cited by podcasters, journalists and fund managers alike. He is not chasing virality. He does not need to.

3- Aleks Nikolic – Corporate lawyer; host, Big Swinging Stocks podcast

Most finance creators address the mechanics of money. Aleks Nikolic addresses the psychology — and that distinction explains why her following is as loyal as it is. Operating as Broke Girl Wealth across Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, Nikolic covers ETFs, crypto and investment strategy, but her real differentiator is a willingness to discuss the emotional architecture of financial decision-making.

Shame around debt. Fear around market volatility. The limiting beliefs that stop people acting on what they already know. In a space where confidence is routinely performed, her candour is a genuine competitive advantage.

4- Bryce Leske & Alec Renehan – Equity Mates Media

Equity Mates did not build a following. They built a media company. What began as a podcast by two friends learning to invest has grown into Australia’s most established investing media brand, covering ASX stocks, ETFs, global markets and fund manager interviews across podcast, social and YouTube.

The longevity is the credential. Equity Mates has operated through multiple market cycles, a global pandemic, and a generational shift in how Australians engage with investing — and its audience has grown through all of it. When the hosts speak, their listeners know they have been paying attention for years.

5- The Lazy CEO – CEO & Founder, Showpo; Shark Tank Australia investor

The metric that matters most on social media is not followers — it is engagement, because engagement signals trust. Jane Lu, known as The Lazy CEO, maintains an engagement rate of approximately 1.15 per cent on Instagram, which is exceptional for a finance account of his size. Her 242,000-plus followers are not passive consumers: they ask questions, share experiences and apply what they read.

Her content focuses on business finance and wealth building, and the active comment sections are the clearest possible evidence that her audience does not merely scroll past.

6- Tash Invests – Founder, Tash Lends; Forbes Australia 30 Under 30

Tash Invests built her following on a premise that sounds simple but is rarer in practice than it should be: she publishes the actual numbers. Not approximations or ranges or anonymised case studies — her salary, her savings rate, her portfolio value, her net worth, updated and on the record.

Having bought her first property at twenty-two and grown her documented net worth past $1 million, she has become the primary reference point for young Australians trying to understand what building wealth on a moderate income genuinely looks like. The specificity is the product.

7- David Scutt – APAC Market Analyst at StoneX Group

The authority of most finance social media content rests on research and reading. David Scutt‘s authority rests on having done the job. A former Treasury Dealer at Arab Bank and the Commonwealth Bank, former ASX Business Supervisor, and former Global Markets Editor at Business Insider Australia and anchor at ausbiz TV, Scutt now brings that direct market experience to his role as APAC Market Analyst at StoneX Group, rather than relying on secondary commentary.

When he discusses foreign exchange movements or ASX dynamics, it is not because he has read about them. It is because he has traded them.

8- Meddy Demars – Investing & crypto content creator

The gap Meddy Demars fills is specific and underserviced: connecting global macroeconomic events to the practical reality of Australian investors. When the US Federal Reserve adjusts interest rates, when inflation data moves, when commodity prices shift — most Australian finance content either ignores the local implications or translates them poorly.

Demars, operating across TikTok and Instagram from Sydney, does the translation well: explaining what global conditions mean for Australian stocks, savings rates and investment portfolios in terms that are accessible without being condescending.

9- Simran Kaur – Founder, Friends That Invest

Friends That Invest is arguably the most successful community-building exercise in Australian personal finance, and Simran Kaur is the reason why. The New Zealand-based creator — whose audience is predominantly Australian — built a podcast, a book and a social media presence around a single insight: that the personal finance world was not speaking to young women, and that the consequences of that gap were significant.

The measurable cultural shift that followed — women engaging with investing concepts in communities that had not previously existed — is the kind of impact that most financial literacy programmes aim for and rarely achieve.

10- Effie Zahos – Money Editor at 9News

Effie Zahos is one of Australia’s most recognised financial commentators, appearing regularly across 9News, A Current Affair, Today and Today Extra as 9News Money Editor. Her role puts everyday money questions, from mortgage rates to cost-of-living pressures, in front of a national broadcast audience.

Before television, she spent years as editor of Money magazine, building the editorial foundation for her current commentary. She is also Director and Money Commentator at InvestSMART, an ambassador for Canstar, and a published author, with her financial advice available in print as well as on screen.

That combination, decades of editorial experience, an active broadcast presence, and a body of published work, is what makes her commentary carry weight beyond any single platform or post.

The common thread across this list is not follower count or platform presence. It is that each creator has built an audience willing to act on what they say, and for the Australians making financial decisions off the back of this content, that trust is the only thing that actually matters.

One Country’s Dream of EV-Driven Prosperity Helps Fuel a Coal Binge Instead

Indonesia pitches its plan to leverage natural resources as a model for other developing nations

The voices reshaping how Australians think about money — and why credibility matters more than reach.