Lil Lotus Coffee of Montessori School Bali has been supporting local farmers by serving their coffee every Friday morning. Currently, they are trying to do more for the Earth by doing experiments on biogas digesters with our engineering team: Raphael Fiedler, Jamie Wong, Emily Eastman. We have also been collaborating with these kids to hold a workshop on renewable energy on November 29th!
Montessori kids invited some local schools to also join the discussions and resource persons from policymakers which were Bappenas, researchers from Stockholm Environment Institute, and su-re.co. They were all free to ask questions and share their thoughts during the discussion.
The first question was coming from Zoe, a student from Canggu Community School “With Indonesia’s socio-economic profile, how do you plan to give access to renewable energy?”
Mr. Andianto from Bappenas gave this answer for this case. He realizes that Indonesia’s geography is unique and the government is responsible to allocate budget for better electricity in a rural areas, especially in eastern Indonesia. The Indonesian government has launched a special funding to provide electricity in remote areas. If the area is not yet supplied PLN, it will be connected by renewable energy. Ms. Sheila from Bappenas also added that they have prepared subsidy to low-income group with one of the projects called Lampu tenaga surya hemat energy or low-energy solar lamps by the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources.
A student from SMPN 2 Kuta also highlighted about renewable energy by asking “What is the percentage of renewable energy in Indonesia? What is the most used renewable energy in Indonesia to date?”
Mr. Andiato stated that there is plenty from solar, hydro, wind, and geothermal and in terms of potential, renewable energy has the potential of 450GW. However, so far we only have 10GW, which means there is still a huge opportunity. “Thus we need the younger generation and many engineers to develop it,” he said. Mr. Asrofi from Bappenas also added “Currently, renewable energy is making up only 7.68%. Geothermal is the leading source of renewable energy, followed by hydro.”
Researchers from Stockholm Environment Institute also gave their thoughts while answering the question from Natasha. “How does Indonesia compare to other countries in terms of green energy use?”
“Indonesia’s, compared to other Southeast Asian countries, use of renewable energy is quite low, because so many fossil fuels are available domestically in Indonesia, with huge reserves of coal, oil, and gas. Renewable energy is not always good. Laos for example is powered by hydropower, but hydropower has actually caused deforestation and other issues in the river, which sparks controversy” said May from SEI. Sofia from SEI also compared Indonesia with developed European countries. She said that there is definitely more renewable energy in countries such as Sweden and Italy. But this means that there are plenty of opportunities for Indonesia to develop renewable energy such as solar rooftops; the future generation can handle these new technologies!
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