Strengthening Indonesia’s Role in ASEAN Through the Energy Transition

Jakarta, 11 April 2023 – Indonesia’s leadership at the international level continues. After being considered successful in becoming the leader of the G20 countries in 2022, in 2023 Indonesia is entrusted with becoming the chairman of ASEAN. As a country with the largest population, economy and energy demand in the ASEAN region, Indonesia has an important role in various aspects of the development of the ASEAN region.

One of the priority issues discussed while Indonesia held the G20 presidency was the energy transition. One of the energy transition guidance documents produced is the Bali Compact which contains the basic principles of accelerating the energy transition which will serve as a guide and reference for the G20 countries in carrying out the energy transition.

Energy transition will be discussed again during Indonesia’s leadership in ASEAN. With this commitment, Indonesia must also accelerate its energy transition process. The success of Indonesia’s energy transition in carrying out energy transitions can affect the energy transition status in ASEAN, especially impression and acceptance from other countries related to energy transition issues.

In an interview for the Indonesia Menyapa program broadcast by RRI Pro 3, Executive Director of the Institute for Essential Services Reform, Fabby Tumiwa said that Indonesia has a number of policy instruments that can be used as principal for its commitment to energy transition.

“Indonesia is one of the countries in ASEAN that has a net zero emission target. In addition, the government also issued Presidential Decree 112/2022 which regulates the acceleration of the termination of coal-fired power plants,” said Fabby.

Even though it has a good record at the policy setting level, Fabby reminded that in terms of developing and adding the installed capacity of renewable energy, Indonesia is quite far behind other ASEAN countries such as Vietnam and the Philippines.

Fabby highlighted that one of the renewable energy projects that has been included in the 2021-2030 PLN RUPTL is also experiencing various obstacles.

“In PLN’s RUPTL, during 2021 – 2025 there should be an additional around 10.5 GW of renewable energy, but the implementation has not been smooth. Take it in the last 5 years, the addition of Indonesia’s renewable energy capacity is sluggish and we need to work hard to fix this,” said Fabby.

One of the reasons why Indonesia is not yet optimal in developing its energy transition is the notion that coal produces cheap electricity and renewable energy is expensive. This perspective was implied when the 35 GW program was launched which made fossil energy infrastructure more common in the electricity system in Indonesia. The availability of fossil energy infrastructure makes the government’s preference more inclined towards the use of fossil energy in planning to meet energy needs in Indonesia. This is increasingly supported by the policy of subsidizing a number of fossil energy commodities such as the DMO (Domestic Market Obligation) price of coal.

“The thing that needs to be considered from these choices is that encouraging the use of coal means closing the opportunity for renewable energy to grow and develop because it will continue to be considered expensive,” explained Fabby.

Fabby closed this interview with an appeal to the government and PLN to pursue the target of adding renewable energy capacity that had been planned in the RUPTL to become a game changer in boosting Indonesia’s influence in the Southeast Asian region.

Inspiring the Youth: CASE Indonesia Teaches the Importance of Energy Transition in Sekolah Bogor Raya

Bogor, 4 April 2023Project Clean, Affordable and Secure Energy for Southeast Asia (CASE) together with Sekolah Bogor Raya kicked off the long-awaited Teaching for the Future (T4F) Program which focuses on the importance of energy transition as a subject in formal education.

CASE Teaching for the Future Program visited Sekolah Bogor Raya as we launched the T4F program, after our great and inspiring experience Sekolah Santa Ursula BSD in 2022. This year, T4F has a completely different agenda, as the students from grades 7, 8 and 11, totaling 150 participants, were involved in active learning, with 15 mentors facilitating, to increase the understanding and challenge them to find solutions towards problems faced by Indonesia in transitioning to clean energy. 

There were 5 different topics facilitated by the mentors, including sustainable energy access, energy efficiency, just energy transition, sustainable transportation and sustainable agriculture. By the end of the session, all students were given a task to create a campaign/project proposal on each specific topic. These ideas/proposals will be presented by the students on 14th April 2023 during Sekolah Bogor Raya Earth Day’s Exhibition.

Dominic, one of the participants of the program mentioned, “One thing that I learned from the session is about the drought in Danau Toba. I critically think of how the drought impacted the communities, especially in acquiring clean water. Education like this is very important for us, to raise awareness and improve our understanding about sustainable energy.”

Agus Tampubolon, CASE Indonesia Project Manager, emphasized the importance of energy transition as a subject in formal education. 

“Education about climate change and clean energy should be informed to the younger generations, as they are the ones who will make energy transition in Indonesia succeed in the future,” said Agus.

Aditya Rao, the Curriculum Coordinator of Sekolah Bogor Raya, told us that most subjects taught in SBR are integrated with the principles of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and since elementary school, the students have already learned about climate change and energy transition. He further mentioned that through this project, SBR hopes its students will be able to understand the theoretical cases of energy transition and climate change in Indonesia in a more practical way and could be inspired to find solutions. 

Note: CASE for Southeast Asia is a collaboration project between the Institute of Essential Services Reform (IESR), GIZ Indonesia and the Ministry of Development Planning (Bappenas) with a mandate of shifting the narrative of energy transition in Indonesia that focuses on decarbonization on the power sector, upscaling renewable energy and energy efficiency, achieving just energy transition and sustainable finance. 

Kontan | IESR Launches Simulation Tool to Calculate Energy Generation Costs

The Institute for Essential Services Reform (IESR) launched a report entitled Making Energy Transition Succeed: A 2023’s Update on The Levelized Cost of Electricity and Levelized Cost of Storage in Indonesia and a web-based simulation tool accessible to the public to estimate energy generation costs for each technology generation and storage of energy.

Read more on Kontan.