Renewable energies in Indonesia: How is it going?

One day, an Indonesian, a Uruguayan, a Norwegian, and an Algerian went to a café together in the afternoon. They started having a nice conversation with warm tea. Somehow, the conversation changed to a topic about renewable energies in their countries. The Uruguay guy was so proud of his country’s achievement on getting 90%* of the energy from wind turbine. And so was the Norwegian guy. His country generated 97%* of its energy from hydro power. Despite his underestimated country, the Algerian guy was also proud of his country, because his country started building a lot of solar cell farms. And then, it was the Indonesian guy turn. They asked him: how is it going there?

How is it going?

*not exact numbers, but I am sure they are big

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The story above is just a self-made fiction in my mind, but it is true that this describes how I felt after the group 4/science project two weeks ago in my school about the renewable energies (read more: ….) . Before that week, I actually had had no idea how my country generated its electricity. I have posted something about the potential of Indonesia in this blog once (it is in Indonesian, sorry), but I actually had no clue what the real it is in the reality. Then, in that project, I and other students had to make a presentation about our own countries’ renewable energy situation. Therefore, this post will be more or less copying from my presentation. Then, let’s start!

As you can see, this picture is the map of Indonesian population distribution.

This picture is in Indonesian (sorry for that, English-speaking people), but the general information I would like to give from this is that in 2010, only in Java island, the electricity production exceeded the demand, but the electricity production didn’t exceed the demand in the rest of Indonesia.

 

And this is the table of renewable energy potential in Indonesia (not sure about the validity, but it is almost similar to the one from Indonesia’s ministry of energy and mineral resources.) The main point of this table is: Indonesia still has a lot of unused potential!

And this is a more complex picture about Indonesia’s energy demand and supply. 

The main part I want to talk about from the picture above is the one on the bottom-left. The Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources projected the energy demand from 1,131.3 million oil barrels equivalent (Setara Barrel Minyak/SBM) in 2010 to 4,300 million oil barrels equivalent in 2025. Indonesia government planned 3 targets, which I can literally classify as: no or little work, medium work, and hard work. Even in the best target where Indonesian government plan to cut off the energy demand as much as 33.85%, the energy will be supplied from 25% renewable energy, 22% coal, 23% natural gas, and 30% oil. It is indeed going to be a really hard work, to improve the 2010 energy supply that is from 4.4% renewable energy, 30.7% coal, 21% natural gas, and 43.9% oil. But, compared to several countries all around the world? Meh, but now we know that Indonesia isn’t in the front line for sure.

But then, the question is: Why is it so hard for Indonesia to develop renewable energies? There are actually several answers for that, which are:

-  Don’t forget that Indonesia is a developing country. 

Indonesia still has a lot of problems to solve. For example for energy sectors, as we have seen from the second picture, all of the islands in Indonesia but Java still has a deficit amount of energy supply. And there are also things such as poverty, uneven development, corruption, and so on which will lead this to another point.

Indeed, in a way, it shouldn’t be an undeniable excuse. As we can see in the reality, several developing countries are also leading the renewable energies development. But, on the other hand, most of them usually get much more benefits by building renewable energies sources.

-  Corruption, corruption everywhere! 

If you know Indonesian politics situation, then you must know how big the corruption is happening here. This point is actually not only limited to the corruption issue, but also including a broader problem such as a bad governance.

-  Its geographic isn’t really supportive (to some extent).
 

Do you know Indonesia has more than 13,000 inhibited islands? It makes it hard to transport energy from an area to another. On the other hand, it could also be the reason why we have to implement renewable energies in undeveloped areas, as it won’t need to be transported anymore. Do you know that Indonesia is located in the ring of fire (an area with a lot of earthquakes and volcanic activities)? It makes it risky for building some renewable energy sources, like nuclear power plants and dams.

-  And some other reasons I couldn’t cover…
 

So, how will it turn out? It depends! It completely depends on so many things. We, as citizen, can give some kind of supports and/or put some pressure to the government, so they can put more efforts in this sector. We also can educate people or share information about renewable energies, then we and other people can put effort by ourselves in developing renewable energies in Indonesia, such as installing solar cells in our home. Moral value: the world depends on us!

Please let me know if there is any mistake in this post and/or if you have any suggestion, comment, and/or additional information to share in the comment section below :). Thanks!

Regards,

Bayu