Indonesia may achieve renewables target, but still favors coal for power

JAKARTA — Indonesia, the world’s fifth-biggest carbon emitter, has significantly scaled back its electricity output plans to boost the share of renewables, but will remain heavily reliant on coal. The administration of President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has introduced a new 10-year electricity procurement business plan (RUPTL) that will see it add 56 gigawatts (GW) of electricity capacity across the archipelago between 2018 and 2027, down 30 percent from its previous target of 78 GW. The scale-back is driven largely by the fact that demand for electricity in Southeast Asia’s largest economy have failed to live up to expectation, Ignasius Jonan, the energy minister, said at a media event. Due to weak demand and sluggish economy, Indonesia has significantly cut target to install new electricity capacity across the archipelago, but most of which still rely on coal. Photo courtesy of Aldi Pagaruyung/Flickr-Creative Commons. The previous plan was based on Jokowi’s ambitious projections of economic growth of 7 percent a year from 2014 to 2019. Under such a scenario, electricity demand was expected to have grown by 8 percent a year. But since Jokowi took office in 2014, Indonesia’s GDP has grown by just 5 percent annually, while demand for electricity has stagnated at around 4.4 percent. As a result, the government has warned the state-owned power utility, PLN, of financial burdens on the company, and by extension on the state, from an oversupply of electricity in parts of the country, particularly the Java-Bali grid. The new 2018-2027 working plan assumes average…

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