Global demands for nickel—a key energy transition metal—have notably risen in recent years, positioning Indonesia as the world’s major supplier. Nickel in Indonesia occurs in laterite ore deposits, and is extracted with open-pit mining, a process which induces land transformation of high carbon stock biomass sources such as forests. This study investigates the spatial and temporal impacts of nickel mining on land cover and biomass carbon stock by combining satellite imagery assessment with a national dataset of land cover classes and biomass carbon stock data from the national Forest Reference Emission Level (FREL) dataset. Focusing on the concession area between 2013 and 2022, 217 nickel mining concession areas within Indonesia were analyzed. Our results revealed that nickel mining activities induced 53% of the forest land transformation within the concession area. By 2022, approximately 6.9 million tCO2 were emitted from the land use induced by nickel mining activities, more than double the amount in 2013. If continued unabated, the trend could reach 7%–12% of the allowable Nationally Determined Contribution target in Indonesia for the land use sector in 2030. Moreover, we observed delays in the official recognition of mining areas in the national land cover map, which relies on manual visual interpretation and potentially leads to misclassification. Additionally, several instances of mining outside officially designated concession zones were detected, indicating governance gaps and regulatory compliance issues. These findings highlight the need for disclosure by mining companies and stronger governance in monitoring and regulating mining extraction activities to address the environmental cost of the energy transition.

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