Bioenergy Implementation in Indonesia

Hi everyone!

I am Indri from THINK-Research Team and can occasionally be a part of the Be-Event Team.

Yesterday we had an online event, collaborated with Motion for Nature and Mentari Energi Indonesia. This was also our first time having so many media partners and sponsor for our event! We didn't plan it. The volunteers of Motion for Nature did a great job! They designed posters that made our event like a pro and looked for media partners. We also looked for media partners; even it was on the last days. We had 23 media partners in total! So, together with our organisations, there are 26 logos in the picture. It was amazing! It was a paid event, so fewer people joined. But all of the participants who registered, joining this event. There were many questions from them.

So, this was our first time having renewable energy technologies as the topic. We had a clean energy transition, affordable energy, and biogas topic in the previous events. I miss the times when I use LEAP, WEAP, HOMER, PVSyst, RETScreen, Energy+ and other software to do energy modelling.

I was a second speaker yesterday, and I presented about bioenergy in Indonesia. I started my presentation by introducing su-re.co, then organic waste, and waste to energy concept. Then, I continued presenting bioenergy products, bioenergy plans, targets, and achievements in Indonesia, and the opportunities and challenges of bioenergy in Indonesia. I had around 20 min to present those. So, I didn't go into more detail, but I presented some case studies of bioenergy in Indonesia, including su-re.co biogas.

Biomass can be from organic waste (solid and liquid). It can be from agricultural, industrial, forestry, or municipal waste. Also, biomass can be used directly (traditional biomass use) or processed into some products. Solid fuel, biofuel, and biogas are bioenergy products. In biomass processing, there are three types: physical, thermochemical, and bio-chemical. Solid waste can be processed into physical, thermochemical, and bio-chemical, while liquid waste can be processed into thermochemical and bio-chemical. In the physical process, biomass will be converted into solid fuel. You might know wood pellets or biomass stove. In the thermochemical and bio-chemical, bio-oil, bioethanol, biochar, biogas, and heat energy can be produced. Based on these processes, one type of biomass can be converted into different products. For example, if we have sugarcane waste, we could convert them into solid fuel, bioethanol, or biochar.

So, how bioenergy in Indonesia?

I started with bioenergy targets in Indonesia. Bioenergy will contribute to the renewable energy portion of the national energy mix in 2025. The targets and current capacities from the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources can be seen below:

1. Bioenergy (Target: 5.5 GW. Current capacity: 1.84 GW)

2. Biofuel (Target: 13.8 million kL. Current capacity: 7.08 million kL)

3. Biomass (Target: 8.4 million tons. Current capacity: not available)

4. Biogas (Target: 489.9 million m3. Current capacity: 26.28 million m3)

Based on the current capacities, biofuel is the only one which already achieved more than 50% of the target.

Furthermore, the Indonesia Government has some strategies in bioenergy implementation. There are 11 strategies, such as bioenergy power plant, cofiring biomass for coal power plant, small scall biomass power plant, waste to energy plant, biofuel, small scale biogas, bio-CNG for commercial scale, biodiesel and bioethanol stove.

There are some opportunities regarding bioenergy implementation in Indonesia, such as abundant resources, easy to be implemented, and scalability (from household to industrial). Some challenges like supply chain, no soft loan and incentives scheme, and feed-in tariff can affect Indonesia's biogas implementation.

If you are interested in climate change, waste management, clean energy, sustainable business, and a sustainable environment, don't forget to follow our social media to know our next events.

See you!