JakartaPost-March 10, 2024
As energy demand—bolstered by rapid economic development— surges in Asia, countries in the region are increasingly searching for investments that will allow them to balance energy needs with their decarbonization goals. Amongst them, Indonesia has announced ambitions to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060. Toward that goal, Indonesia has begun promoting biofuel and ethanol as renewable energy sources. Nationwide implementation of the Biodiesel Mandate (B35) program in 2023, which requires the blending of 35 percent biodiesel derived from palm oil with 65 percent conventional diesel fuel in transportation and industrial sectors, is one such example. State oil and gas company Pertamina’s 2023 launch of a new gasoline product containing a blend with 5 percent ethanol, derived from domestic sugarcane, in Surabaya is another such initiative. Yet efforts to date have been insufficient to meet energy transition goals, given escalating energy demand. Implementing multiple decarbonization strategies in the near future will thus be crucial to support Indonesia’s net-zero transition. One emerging strategy, that has gained traction in Indonesia and Malaysia, is the investment in technologies to capture and store carbon, known as carbon sequestration. Within Asia, Indonesia has taken the lead in its bid to become the region’s hub for CO2 storage, with up to 128 prospective basins to be explored, among which 20 are already in use. These include nationwide initiatives such as research and development by the Indonesian Institute of Sciences Research and Indonesian Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources into geological sequestration technologies and policy analyses, and pilot projects like the Indonesia CCS (INC3) project that captures CO2 emissions from the Jawa 7 coal-fired power plant and stores them underground. Read more at: https://www.thejakartapost.com/opinion/2024/03/10/why-carbon-utilization-key-to-indonesias-decarbonization.html.
