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Energy sector biggest emissions emitter
Experts have urged the government to invest more in renewable energy as energy consumption in Indonesia has been predicted to raise exponentially because of population growth and overdependence on fossil fuel and will be one of the major carbon emission contributors besides deforestation
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xperts have urged the government to invest more in renewable energy as energy consumption in Indonesia has been predicted to raise exponentially because of population growth and overdependence on fossil fuel and will be one of the major carbon emission contributors besides deforestation.
'With our changing demographics, our energy consumption per capita will also rise because we still rely on coal and fossil fuel for transportation, especially as the country becomes more urbanized,' University of Indonesia (UI) environmental expert Jatna Supriatna told The Jakarta Post on Monday.
Population dynamics are closely related to increases in greenhouse gas emissions as fossil fuel-based energy consumption continues to increase, further accelerating climate change, according to UN Population Fund (UNFPA) Indonesia.
With rapid urbanization, about 65 percent of the population will live in urban areas by 2050. Moreover, high population growth and changing age structure over the previous few decades has resulted in a rapid increase in people of productive age.
Changing social economic composition ' in which the number of middle-class people continue to grow ' has increased the use of energy. National Development Planning Board (Bappenas) data shows that the government had underestimated the contribution of energy consumption to carbon emissions emitted by the country.
Bappenas environment and natural resources deputy Endah Murniningtyas recently said the government had realized the trend after revising its carbon emission data to set its post-2020 carbon emissions target.
In 2010, energy consumption contributed 400 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2). By 2020, Bappenas predicts it will double to 800 million tons. And by 2045, it will more than quadruple to 1.7 billion tons.
On the other hand, carbon emissions from agriculture, forestry and other land use as well as peat decomposition and peat fires reached 900 million tons in 2010 and is predicted to decrease to 760 million tons in 2020 and reach 1.14 billion tons by 2045.
Endah said the government had underestimated the contribution of energy consumption as it took only energy consumption per capita into account.
'It turns out that there are other energy consumption data such as household energy consumption,' she said. 'Therefore, in the past the biggest contributors were land and peat fires. Now energy has joined them.'
The new data will be taken into account by the government in deciding the country's new carbon emissions target as it gears up for the UN climate conference in Paris in December.
Indonesia is heavily dependent on fossil fuel, particularly oil and coal, despite possessing abundant potential sources of renewable energy, primarily geothermal and solar energy.
Located on the 'ring of fire', the country is rich with volcanoes that offer abundant geothermal sources, with 28,000 megawatts (MW) in potential. Yet only 5 percent of it has been tapped. In addition, the country also gets sunlight throughout the year, making it ripe for solar power development.
Despite this potential, efforts to exploit these resources have been few and far between, something that has been attributed by experts to the lack of state budget allocations for new and renewable energy.
In the 2015 state budget, the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry received Rp 14.9 trillion (US$1.1 billion), of which only Rp 1.69 trillion is earmarked for the development of infrastructure related to new and renewable energy.
Therefore, a bigger budget is needed to tap the country's renewable energy potential, particularly geothermal, according to Ode Rakhman of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi).
