Mangroves for the Community

Cirebon, 26 January 2024 – South Kesunean is one of the coastal areas in the Kasepuhan Village area, Lemahwungkuk District, Cirebon City. Located on the coast, the South Kesunean area experiences threats in the form of abrasion or tidal flooding. Realizing this, people of Kesunean Selatan started planting mangroves to prevent this abrasion.

The need to maintain mangroves is not running smoothly considering that some of the local people have a habit of piling up rubbish and turning it into waste land. Emerging land is a phenomenon where residents deliberately collect rubbish, then pile it up on the coast until it becomes solid and forms new land to be used as a residential area.

Considering its location on the coast, a number of residents who are members of the RW 09 Kesunean Selatan mangrove Working Group (Pokja) have made various efforts, including educating local residents not to pile up rubbish and make land emerge again in the area around the mangrove forest. Even though public awareness is starting to awaken to no longer hoarding rubbish, there are still people who cut down mangrove trees for firewood, and step on small mangrove trees when going to sea.

Pepep Nurhadi, Chair of RW 09 South Kesunean and administrator of the Kesunean Mangrove Working Group, hopes that the South Kesunean mangrove forest can survive and even develop further.

“We hope that this mangrove can develop into a kind of ecotourism site so that the surrounding community can directly benefit socio-economically,” said Pepep.

For this reason, the South Kesunean Mangrove Working Group is open to collaboration and assistance from various parties. Since 2023, the Institute for Essential Services Reform (IESR) through the Generasi Energi Bersih (GEB) community has carried out collaborative observations and assessments that can be carried out with the residents of South Kesunean.

After discussions with the local community, several things were identified, namely planting mangrove seedlings and caring for them, making a mangrove track (a kind of bridge) so that fishermen going to sea no longer step on mangrove seedlings, as well as increasing the capacity of local residents through training in ecoprint batik with dyes, mainly natural mangroves resourced.

To invite the involvement of more people, the Generasi Energi Bersih community is opening donations for the development of the South Kesunean mangrove area to become an ecotourism area via the following page.

Communities Build Sustainability-Based Businesses

Cirebon, 26 January 2024 – On the fourth day, the West Java Energy Exploration team continued their journey to Cirebon. Precisely in South Kesunean, Kasepuhan Village, Lemahwungkuk District. There, the group moved towards the shoreline to plant mangroves. South Kesunean has one problem, namely the emerging soil phenomenon. This raised land appears due to the accumulation of rubbish on the shoreline which is compacted to form new land.

This habit of residents threatens a mangrove ecosystem which functions to resist sea abrasion. For approximately one year, a group of Kesunean residents took the initiative to form a Working Group (Pokja) to care for the mangrove area located in their area.

The West Java Energy Exploration group visited the Kesunean mangrove area to participate in planting mangroves as an effort to restore mangrove forests.

Pepep Nurhadi, Chair of RW 09 South Kesunean, as well as chair of the South Kesunean Mangrove Working Group (Pokja), said that the presence of mangroves in South Kesunean plays an important role in preventing flooding and abrasion as well as protecting coastal ecosystems.

“For this reason, we thank all parties who have supported us in this mangrove planting effort. “We hope that in the future our area can become an ecotourism area so that it can be more beneficial for local residents,” he said.

 

Karya Nugraha Jaya Cooperative Pioneers Sustainable Dairy Farm:

People and communities continue to look for ways to use renewable energy technology. In the landscape of micro businesses and cooperatives, community groups such as the Karya Nugraha Jaya Producers Cooperative strive to ensure that livestock operational processes can be clean and sustainable.

The Karya Nugraha Jaya Cooperative is a dairy farming cooperative located in Cipari Village, Cigugur District, Kuningan Regency, West Java, founded in 2004 and has around 4000 cows with a cooperative membership of 100 farmers. This cooperative is motivated to organize clean and sustainable livestock farming.

Iding Karnadi, Chairman of the Karya Nugraha Jaya Cooperative, said that the first thing that was initiated was the installation of a biogas reactor to process cow dung waste.

“Initially, dairy cow dung was an environmental problem, apart from being dirty, it also smelled bad. Finally, we collaborated with ITB to create this biogas installation,” he said.

The biogas installation was finally installed with a production capacity of 100 m3 of gas per day. The gas produced is used for electricity needs for water heating on farms. It doesn’t stop there, the Karya Nugraha Jaya Cooperative also installed hybrid solar panel installations on farms and feed factories amounting to 56 kWp.

“For the feed factory, we currently fully use electricity from PLTS amounting to 40 kWp, no longer using electricity from PLN,” said Iding.

Iding then continued that his party continues to look at other opportunities to make its livestock cooperatives more advanced and adopt more sustainable practices. Currently, the party is collaborating with ITB to treat livestock wastewater. In the future, the management of this cooperative hopes that the location of this cooperative will become an educational tourist attraction about Sustainable Dairy Farms.

Kompas | Decarbonize Away Grills from Fire

Starting from 2019, the global average temperature has increased by 1.1 degrees Celsius, which is hotter than the pre-industrial period of the 1850s. The increase in temperature on the earth’s surface is an indication of an increase in the concentration of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrogen monoxide (N2O), which is trapped in the atmosphere.

Read more on Kompas.

The Modal Share of Indonesia’s Transportation Requires Strong Push from the Government

Dekarbonisasi sektor transportasi Indonesia

Jakarta, 5 December 2023 – Since 2021 the transportation sector in Indonesia has been ranked as the second highest emitter, displacing industry. Many emissions from the transportation sector are caused by burning fuel, which is the main energy source for vehicles. With projected economic growth and development plans, it is predicted that emissions from the Indonesia’s transportation sector will continue to increase. As an effort to strengthen climate change mitigation actions, decarbonization of the transportation sector is important.

Fabby Tumiwa, Executive Director of the Institute for Essential Services Reform (IESR) in the webinar entitled “Dissemination of Indonesia’s Transportation Decarbonization Roadmap”, (5/12) emphasized that to ensure each climate change mitigation actions are in line with the Paris Agreement, emission reduction targets must be calculated not just based on percentages but also taking into account alignment with Paris targets.

“IESR carries out modeling to find policies and steps that can be taken to increase Indonesia’s climate change mitigation actions, especially in the transportation sector,” said Fabby.

The draft transportation decarbonization roadmap focuses on two scales, namely the national and regional scales (Jabodetabek).

IESR sustainable mobility analyst, Rahmi Puspita Sari added that the increase in private vehicle ownership, especially motorbikes, has been one of the factors causing increased emissions from the transportation sector.

“With various types of demand growth and the choice of mode still being private transport, this has an impact on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the transportation sector. “Most of the GHG emissions come from passenger transportation (73%), and followed by land transportation (27%),” said Rahmi.

Fauzan Ahmad, member of the Tasrif Modeling Team, who participated in modeling the transportation decarbonization road map, explained one of the main findings from this simulation, namely that in the Avoid, Shift, Improve (ASI) scheme, which is quite common for transportation management, there is potential for reducing emissions up to 18% by avoiding travel by implementing a work from home (WFH) system.

“Actually, only 8% of the total workers can work from home, of this 8% potential, currently only around 1% of workers work from home. If this potential is maximized, we can reduce emissions even more by the number of trips avoided,” said Fauzan.

Fauzan also added that the choice to review transportation patterns in Jabodetabek was because Jabodetabek was considered as a unified area that interacts with each other.

Arij Ashari Nur Iman, a modeler from the Tasrif Modeling Team, added that with the current condition of the transportation system, the most effective solution for decarbonizing the transportation sector is to divide passenger loads into various modes (mode share).

“Electric vehicles will have a big impact on the goal of reducing emissions, but two conditions must be achieved to have an impact on a national scale, namely increasing the sales share of electric vehicles and creating a policy framework that supports the discard rate of ICE vehicles. Modal shifting to public transportation will be a sustainable solution in the context of fuel and resource use, but requires large initial investment,” explained Arij.

Professor of civil engineering at Gadjah Mada University (UGM), Agus Taufik Mulyono, stated that the Indonesian government still does not have the courage to create (transportation) policies that encourage share modes.

“This share mode issue must be regulated by the government in law, currently there is no law. This study is good, because when more advanced modes of sharing are deemed difficult, then both are still road transportation, but shared between spaces,” he said.

Agus also reminded of implementation challenges if the recommendations of this study were adopted in the form of policies or regulations.

In line with Agus, Alloysius Joko Purwanto, Research and Development Commission, Jakarta City Transportation Council also highlighted the use of public transportation which should be further encouraged.

“Current policies have the potential to cause contradictions, such as the electric vehicle incentive policy, which on one hand has the potential to increase private vehicle ownership rates and has the potential to increase traffic jams because the discard rate for ICE vehicles is still low,” said Joko.

The use of biofuels is also included in the transportation decarbonization roadmap modeling. Edi Wibowo, Director of Bioenergy, Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources, said that the results of this study are broadly in line with Indonesia’s energy transition road map which will generally add renewable energy capacity to power plants and other sectors will also follow to shift to a more efficient system like such as biofuel.

“We (at the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources) continue to develop biofuels, currently we are testing the application of Biodiesel B40 and if the process goes smoothly in 2026 it will start to be used. This (development) effort is a form of real support for Indonesia’s energy transition plan,” said Edi.

Gonggomtua E. Sitanggang, Director, ITDP Indonesia emphasized the importance of public communication to raise awareness among the public. When the public has sufficient awareness and knowledge about the importance of a low-emission transportation system, it will be easier to involve and mobilize them to slowly reduce their dependence on the use of private vehicles.

“Apart from that, it is also important to look at the relationship between the national government and regional governments. What needs to be underlined is our laws and regulations relating to regional autonomy (otonomi daerah), where the one who has the budget and authority is the regional government, while transportation has not yet become one of the KPIs (key performance indicators) for regional leaders. As a result, the budget for the transportation sector is very minimal,” said Gonggom.

National and Regional Low-Emission Transportation Policy Roadmap

press release

Jakarta, December 5, 2023 – A significant reduction in emissions from the transportation sector is a strategy to achieve zero emission by 2050 per the Paris Agreement, or net zero emission (NZE) by 2060, as the Government of Indonesia targets. To turn this commitment into an actionable strategy, developing a comprehensive roadmap for decarbonizing the transport sector is essential.

The Institute for Essential Services Reform (IESR) has developed a roadmap for transport sector decarbonization policy at the national and regional (Jabodetabek) levels. Based on IESR data, the transportation sector, particularly land transportation, is responsible for increasing greenhouse gas emissions in Indonesia. Land transportation passenger movement accounts for 73% or 110 mtCO2e of total transportation emissions in 2022.

“Indonesia has updated its emission reduction target in the Enhanced Nationally Determined Contribution (ENDC). However, emission reduction is not only based on percentage; it must be aligned with the Paris Agreement. To achieve this, IESR has conducted roadmap modeling of transportation sector decarbonization opportunities with national and Jabodetabek regional model structures. This modeling aims to find the optimal steps that can be taken to increase Indonesia’s climate change mitigation actions,” said IESR Executive Director Fabby Tumiwa. 

 

Rahmi Puspita Sari, IESR Sustainable Mobility Analyst, explained that the number of registered vehicles in 2021 has grown faster than the population rate across the country. Motorcycles make up the majority of registered vehicles, accounting for around 84.54% of the total number of cars in the country. This trend is also observed in the Jabodetabek region, where 75.8% of transportation modes used in 2019 were motorcycles, according to the Jabodetabek Urban Transportation Policy Integration (JUTPI) report. The reason for this dominance is the growth of the Indonesian economy, increased purchasing power, and the relatively low cost of motorcycles.

“Currently, we do not have public transportation that can compete with motorcycles in terms of price and time. This is concerning as motorcycles emit more pollutants than cars due to incomplete combustion. Additionally, two mobility phenomena contribute to the traffic in Jakarta. The first is commuter mobility, where people travel between zones from outside Jakarta to Jakarta for work or education, accounting for about 10% of trips in Jakarta. The second is circular mobility, where semi-permanent residents in the city return to their hometowns or travel for holidays on an annual basis,” Rahmi explained. 

IESR examined vehicle and passenger movement policies in the transportation decarbonization roadmap modeling. Nationally, based on the principles of avoid (avoid and reduce travel), shift (switch to low-carbon vehicles), and improve (increase energy efficiency), five policies were tested to reduce emissions in the transportation sector. The five policies are working from home, concentrating travel on public transportation, using biofuels, setting a minimum amount of motor fuel efficiency (fuel economy standard), and providing incentives for electric motor vehicles and cars.

Fauzan Ahmad, Tasrif Modeling Team, who was also involved in creating the transportation decarbonization roadmap, said that the results of the policy testing indicate that transportation emissions can be reduced by 15% to 75% until 2060. This can be achieved through work-from-home policies, electric vehicles, biofuel use, public transportation use, and fuel efficiency. However, it is important to note that these reductions are mainly driven by passenger vehicle policies and not yet freight vehicles and road logistics.

 

“Electric vehicle policies have the potential to reduce national emissions significantly. However, two key factors must be addressed to achieve this goal to have an impact at the national level, namely an increase in the sales share of electric vehicles (EV sales share) and policy support that encourages a reduction in the number of fuel vehicles (ICE) that are not eligible to operate (discard rate). In addition, shifting modes towards public transportation has a more sustainable impact on fuel and resource use but requires considerable investment,” Fauzan explained.

While in the Jabodetabek region, using the principles of avoid, shift and improve, there are seven policies tested on the transportation decarbonization road map, namely development planning around public transportation (Transit Oriented Development, TOD), work from home (WFH), imposing restrictions on high-emission vehicles (Low, Emission Zone, LEZ), concentrating on public transportation, using biofuels, setting a minimum amount of motorized fuel efficiency (fuel economy standard) and providing incentives for electric motor vehicles and cars.

Arij Ashari Nur Iman, Tasrif Modeling Team, mentioned that the results of policy testing at the regional level showed a decrease in transportation emissions of around 7%-43% annually from the baseline scenario in the 2010-2060 timeframe through a combination of WFH, LEZ, TOD, electric vehicles, biofuels, use of public transportation, and fuel efficiency policies.

   

“Establishing low-carbon policies can reduce emissions by up to 45%. The most significant policy is establishing a minimum motorized fuel efficiency, using biofuels, prioritizing public transportation, and promoting electric vehicles,” Arij explained.