Although promoted as an energy transition solution based on a “people’s economy”, the woody biomass industry is dominated by a conglomeration of old oligarchs, who are already fat with exploitation of fossil energy and Indonesian forestry, Trend Asia recently reported.
Trend Asia is an independent civil society organization acting as an accelerator of energy transformation and sustainable development in Asia.
“ Even in the supply chain, it is dominated by the financiers and business entities affiliated with the coal fired power plant. Biomass development is not really there to support the clean energy transition, nor to support the people’s economy. It is a cheap solution to boost the renewable energy mix with a game of maths.
It utilizes the infrastructure and systems of forest exploitation familiar to the Indonesian oligarchy,” Program Manager of Trend Asia Amalya Reza said on Monday, June 24, 2024.
Government is developing a program called Co-firing or replacing part of coal burned in coal fire power plan with biomass. The co-firing program will be implemented in
52 coal fired power plants across Indonesia. The co-firing program will consist of 10 percent of biomass and 90 percent of coals. With the 10percent of quota, Indonesia needs 10 million tons of biomass by 2025.
According to Amalya, the biomass program is also closely aligned with the interests of the fossil energy industry, particularly coal, as a cosmetic effort to greenwash the coal fired power plants. Coal fire power plants use biomass as cosmetic greenwashing efforts to image themselves as clean energy and delay their retirements. Biomass is a false solution to the energy transition that is diverting Indonesia in the crucial process of against climate change, and it must end.
Based on the data of Trend Asia, said Amalya Reza, there are two categories of companies that benefit from the government biomass program .
First is forest managers linked to large conglomerates. Trend Asia identified various companies that were involved with the management of timber plantations for energy. Trend Asia identified companies registered with the Directorate of Production Forest Enterprises at the Environment and Forestry Ministry as companies committed to multi-enterprise energy forest, which turned out to be under large forestry conglomerates.
They include Sampoerna Group, Medco Group, Jhonlin Group, Korindo Group, Sinarmas Group, Wilmar Group, and Barito Pacific Group.
The second category, according to Amalya Reza, is forest managers related to state-owned enterprises. They include Perhutani and Inhutani.
