Indonesia

The World Bank has agreed to finance part of a project owned by Indonesian state-owned utility, PLN. The facility is planned to enable a larger penetration of renewable energy to provide with power two large demand centers in West Java.

A roadmap to rapid carbon emission reduction has suggested the nation add 2.4 GW of generation capacity next year as part of a 15 GW new-solar target this decade. The claims of solar-plus-storage should be ignored for now, according to a new policy document, because batteries will make PV less competitive with coal.

South-East Asia’s biggest floating PV installation is under construction by Masdar and Indonesian energy company PT PJB. The two companies secured a PPA for the project with state electricity company Perusahaan Listrik Negara (PLN) in January 2020. The agreed tariff is $0.0581/kWh.

If built, the project would be the world’s largest floating PV power plant and would reach the same capacity as the largest ground-mounted facility currently in operation.

Indonesia will catch the eye too over the next nine years, according to analyst WoodMac, as its market grows from 300 MW to 8.5 GW.

Electricity bill payers in nations as diverse as Germany, Greece, India and China should be aware new solar projects can now generate electricity cheaper for them than legacy coal and gas-fired plants.

With ‘shovel-ready’ projects across India, Africa and Latin America in line for a mix of grants, cheap loans, equity investment and financial guarantees from this year, the two bodies hope to trigger $20 billion in total funding and bring reliable power to a billion people.

Energy efficiency, electrification of heating and transport, and the provision of clean cooking facilities are all going in the wrong direction as the Covid crisis deprived millions in sub-Saharan Africa of electricity use, according to a report by the IEA, IRENA, WHO, World Bank and UN Statistics Division.

With the nation among the world’s top ten greenhouse gas emitting states, energy analysts from three policy advisories have spelled out how Jakarta could hit net zero by mid century rather than 2070, as currently planned. However, the energy transition would require uncharacteristically long term thinking.

The sheer volume of new power lines which will be required to accommodate the rising tide of solar installations ensures copper has been included by the International Energy Agency on its list of minerals which must keep flowing if the energy transition is to stay on course. And it’s not production that’s the potential bottleneck.