Minister of Energy and Mineral Resource Arifin Tasrif says Indonesia’s energy mix program has not increased significantly in 2023 that Indonesia needs to strive to get close to the target of 23 percent energy mix in 2025. Energy mix program is meant to reduce the use of fossil fuel based energy and increase the use of renewable energy.
“Currently our energy mix is still 13.1 percent,” Arifin told an annual media conference in Jakarta on January 15,2024.
According to Arifin, the failure of Indonesia to achieve the target is caused by several factors. First, the less availability of electrical energy in the system due to the 35 GW capacity power plant construction program that has not been resolved and has entered the commitment stage.
Second, the impact of reduced demand. The reduced demand was caused by obstacle that Indonesia experienced some times ago did not encourage increased electricity consumption.
“And thirdly this is our system. Whether our infrastructure can support it or not as a whole, we must improve the system so that it is perfect. We also need to prevent inefficiencies. We need to have many smart grids so that there is no intrusion and we can maintain efficiency,” he explained.
The last and the most important thing is the demand growth. As to encourage growth, our energy must be competitive and environmentally friendly. The competitive and environmentally friendly energy will encourage investment in the country.
Strategic Steps
Arifin said there are several strategic steps to achieve the 2025 energy mix target including the acceleration of rooftops solar PV program. The program must be adjusted to the ability of the community and the ability of PLN to accommodate it. Besides, Indonesia should implement the power plant conversion program to renewable energy and the mandatory B35 program with a 2025 target of 13.9 million kilo liters.
“We must intensify the cofiring program to reduce emissions and provide energy access through renewable energy in remote and isolated locations. Also included is the geothermal exploration which still has not reached what we planned and programmed,” he explained.
The ministry has inaugurated a floating solar power plant in Cirata, West Java. The ministry is also developing more projects of floating solar power plants because Indonesia has surface waters that can be utilized and optimized to produce energy.
The potential for floating solar power plants in lakes is found 36 locations with the potential utilization is 74.6 GW. In addition, there are also hydro power and micro hydro in 12 locations with potential of 1.8 GW. ” We will optimize these,” Arifin concluded.
In addition to this, there are 259 dam locations, with potential of 14.7 GW. There are potentials for hydropower in these dams to produce 450 MW which can immediately be used for energy mix.
