The government has created a roadmap to address various risks and problems that may be associated with future climate change in order to demonstrate its commitment to achieving net zero emissions (NZE) by 2060. The government is putting into practice five main principles in pursuit of the zero-emission target: increasing the use of new renewable energy (NRE), reducing the use of fossil fuels, promoting electric vehicles in the transportation sector, increasing the use of electricity in homes and businesses, and utilizing Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS).
Due to the gap between the 2025 roadmap and the actual situation, the commitment to achieve net zero emissions is currently insufficient. The percentage of new and renewable energy, which is projected at 23 per cent in the 2025 roadmap released by the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources (Kementerian Energi dan Sumber Daya Mineral/ESDM), has only achieved 12 per cent in actual utilization. As a result, careful and comprehensive preparation is required to be able to completely abandon fossil fuels or non-renewable energy sources. This can be caused by a number of factors, including the laws and regulations currently in place that govern new and renewable energy or RUU EBT, which has not been able to establish a strong, comprehensive legal basis and guarantee legal certainty.
In order to achieve energy independence and security and support sustainable national development, the national energy policy is meant to serve as a guideline for national energy management. The National Energy Policy (Kebijakan Energi Nasional/KEN), which was created by the National Energy Council (Dewan Energi Nasional/DEN) and approved by the President as Government Regulation (Peraturan Pemerintah/PP) Number 79 of 2014 concerning National Energy Policy, includes the 2025 road map. The NRE composition targets of 23 per cent in 2025 and 31 per cent in 2050, as well as the target for annual electricity consumption per person of 2,500 kWh in 2025 and 7,000 kWh in 2050, are the three points in the PP.
Although Indonesia has a 442 gigawatt potential for renewable energy, only 8.8 gigawatts were actually used in 2018. During the DEN Anugerah Webinar on October 20, 2022, in Jakarta, Satya Widya Yudha, a member of the National Energy Council (DEN), stated that fossil energy in the form of oil and natural gas is still needed for the optimization of the NRE mix as a transitional fuel and as a supporting fuel for NRE plants. Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology, which can reduce greenhouse gas emissions from operations involving fossil fuels, is the technology being sought in the transition process. This indicates that fossil energy will continue to have a role in the transition to NRE through technological advancements made in geothermal, hydro, and wind power facilities, among others.
Also in accordance with Satya, the intermittent or discontinuous energy integration makes the usage of NRE less than ideal. When the amount of sunshine declines or diminishes, solar power plant (PLTS) power likewise declines. Similar to this, when the unpredictable water discharge prevents the water turbine from maximizing the use of hydraulic power, the issue of developing NRE is not resolved by the extensive use of geothermal or geothermal energy. Because of its numerous volcanoes, Indonesia actually contains a lot of geothermal potentials that, if properly utilized, might allow it to produce electricity the whole day long.
These conditions will certainly provide economic opportunities both regionally and globally with the decline in the price of EBT electricity production and the scarcity of fossil fuels that can be utilized at high prices. In order to achieve a zero-emission future, the electricity mix that uses NRE as the primary source of energy supply needs to be encouraged, especially in the electricity sector. Indonesia is estimated to need as much as 37 billion US dollars or equivalent to Rp 568 trillion if it has to stop 118 coal-fired power plant operations in the country. In fact, 60 per cent of Indonesia’s electricity sector is still produced from coal (PLTU) with 250,000 people working in the industry.
However, considering that a number of regions still rely on local revenue from the oil and gas sector and state assets in the steam power plant (PLTU) business are quite high, the process of Indonesia’s energy transition to NRE is overall rather problematic. Indonesian employees are among the lowest prepared in Southeast Asia for the NRE sector, far below Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and Singapore. The energy transition, however, still requires a continual process and takes a number of factors into consideration.
Additionally, the news of the carbon tax’s postponement, which was actually implemented in 2021 in article 13 of Law No. 7/2021, which states that the carbon tax goes into effect on April 1, 2022, may be violated by this postponement. It shows that the government is not serious about this energy transition. Supposedly, the distribution of revenue from the coal carbon tax can aid in the development of NRE technology in Indonesia so that the mobility of fossil fuels has a constructive effect for the sake of NRE readiness in Indonesia. Although the use and capital of fossil fuels are still necessary for Indonesia’s energy transition, there has not been any serious effort to figure out how to do so up until this point.
