JakartaPost-Sept 22
The Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry expects Indonesia to miss by a wide margin its year-end target for renewable power generating capacity. Experts blame uncompetitive prices and policies that support coal power. Eniya Listiani Dewi, the energy ministry’s renewables director general, said PLN, according to its electricity procurement plan (RUPTL), would need to build renewable power plants with a total capacity of 8.2 gigawatts (GW) by 2025 to meet the target. Projects in the pipeline include solar, hydroelectric, micro-hydro and wind power plants with a total capacity of 2.83 GW, 1.7 GW, 787 megawatts and 527 MW, respectively. The investment required for those plants was estimated at US$14 billion, she added. Putra Adhiguna, managing director at the Energy Shift Institute, said enough investors were keen to invest in renewable energy in Indonesia but the country lacked credible projects with clear procurement timelines in the pipeline. “There are too many large sums [of investment targets] flying around. The government should rather focus on the short-term targets, on what they can deliver in the next 12 to 24 months,” he told The Jakarta Post on Sept. 13. Indonesia has only attracted $580 million in new and renewable energy investment as of August, just around 47 percent of the $1.23 billion target set for this year, according to energy ministry data. To date, renewable energy makes up 13.9 percent of the national energy mix, with around 241 MW of renewable electricity capacity installed since the beginning of the year. Putra said pricing had long been an obstacle for renewable energy investment in Indonesia. Electricity from renewable sources struggles to compete with artificially cheap electricity from coal-fired power plants. The government argues the policies are needed to ensure that Indonesia, the world’s biggest thermal coal exporter, keeps enough coal in the domestic market to produce affordable power, making it difficult to create a level playing field between coal power and renewable energy power plants. Read more at: https://www.thejakartapost.com/business/2024/09/22/indonesia-far-short-of-2025-renewable-energy-target.html.
