On September 21, 2021, EKONID held a Virtual Trade Mission towards the Indonesian market on Energy Generation from Municipal and Agricultural Residues.
Organized in collaboration partnership with eclareon GmbH and supported by the German Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) under its German Energy Solutions Initiative, the event gathered over 60 participants, including experts from the Indonesian and German renewable energy sector.
The virtual trade mission comprised of a country briefing followed by a seminar and three days of B2B meetings. Ute Brockmann, Deputy Managing Director of EKONID, opened the session with an overview of the potential that Indonesia has for renewable energy, citing resources from organic residues from the country鈥檚 agriculture industries remaining largely untapped. Recent data reveals that Indonesia has slightly increased its reliance on conventional fuels, such as domestic coal and imported petroleum products, to satisfy its energy consumption needs. However, its growing usage of renewables is more notable. Renewable energy sources have consistently been added to the country's overall energy mix, which paints a positive trend for Indonesia's future shift towards green energy.
According to data from the Indonesian Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources, only 11% of the Indonesian energy mix are renewable energy, while the remaining 89% are fossil fuel-based. However, the country is committed towards utilizing renewable energy in the effort to mitigate climate change. The Indonesian government has drafted a Grand National Energy Strategy that accelerates, among others, an increase in the production capacity and absorption of renewable energy with a renewable energy target of at least 23% by 2025 and 51% by 2050.
In order to achieve this goal, the Indonesian government launched a Waste-to-Energy Acceleration Projects in 12 cities in Indonesia including Jakarta, Surabaya and Bali. This indicates that, in the short-term, growth in renewables will exceed the demand for coal and oil, which, in the long-term, could significantly reduce fossil fuel鈥檚 overall share in the country's energy consumption to be replaced by renewable energies, including waste to energy.
Opportunities and Challenges
The seminar addressed two very important issues on waste management and renewable energies. Indonesia is included within the top five countries with the highest share of renewables in the total final energy consumption in the Asia-Pacific region. The renewable share in the power mix comes mainly from hydropower plants of about eight percent and geothermal plants of about five percent.
In terms of waste-to-energy, two major implementations of the technology in Indonesia can be found in Benowo in Surabaya, East Java, and the RDF Plant in Cilacap, Central Java, with the bioenergy mainly sourced from municipal residues. In comparison, around eight percent of Germany鈥檚 electricity is generated from bioenergy sources.
It may be interesting to note that more than half of the participants in the seminar see more potential in agricultural residues than municipal residues for energy generation. This result shows that there is currently strong demand for the mobilization of agricultural residues for bioenergy as well as an acknowledgement to the need for more sustainability in the agriculture industry. Furthermore, Indonesian participants expressed significant interest towards bio-methane, citing it as having a major potential for the Indonesian market. As for the challenge, large infrastructure investments such as creating a pipeline for the distribution of gas to customers, was identified as one of the core issues for bio-methane production.
In total, eight German companies took part in the event and presented their services and technologies. Furthermore, more than 50 individual B2B meetings were conducted in the following three days after the seminar. EKONID would like to thank all the stakeholder who participated in the event. We hope that this seminar has provided even more perspectives to the Waste to Energy Generation from Municipal and Agricultural Residues.