JakartaPost-Sept 12
The rising export and domestic consumption of wood pellets and wood chips creates business opportunities but also adds to the risk of deforestation in Indonesia as stakeholders boost the production of energy crop biomass in a highly land-intensive process. Indonesia’s wood chip and wood pellet biomass exports increased by 42 percent and 387 percent year-on-year (yoy) to 1.63 million tons and 121,429 tons in 2023, respectively. Japan and China were Indonesia’s top wood chip export destinations with total shipments of 868,147 tons and 756,425 tons, respectively. The top wood pellet export destinations, on the other hand, were Japan and South Korea with shipments of 52,735 tons and 68,025 tons, respectively. Thermax Global, which makes boilers to turn biomass into energy, has noticed a rapid increase in biomass utilization worldwide. In Indonesia, demand for biomass-fired boilers is expected to account for 60 percent of the company’s sales this year, up from 47 percent last year, Thermax Global CEO Ashish Bhandari said in Jakarta on Sept. 3. Milton Pakpahan, chairman of the Indonesian Biomass Energy Society (MEBI), said the increasing use of biomass was in line with the government’s plan to push co-firing in coal power plants as well as to increase the use of biomass by industries aiming to lower their carbon footprint, including chemical, textile, cement, food and beverage and pulp and paper businesses. Timer Manurung, director of environmental group Auriga Nusantara, said increasing biomass demand had led to an expansion of energy plantation forests in Indonesia, causing deforestation in areas including Gorontalo, North Kalimantan, East Kalimantan and Central Kalimantan. Permits have been issued for at least 1.35 million hectares of energy plantation forests, according to data compiled by Auriga Nusantara, including 497,226 ha for land that is currently natural forest. Read more at:
