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Jokowi’s green energy promise for new capital gets thumbs up
East Kalimantan has enough renewable energy resources to meet the electricity needs of the new capital city.
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Clean and sustainable: A man checks solar panels that power a naval base in Riau Islands. The government has promised to use renewable energy to meet the electricity needs of the new capital city in East Kalimantan. (The Jakarta Post/Dhoni Setiawan)
P
resident Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s promise to use renewable energy to meet the electricity needs of the new capital city in East Kalimantan has received strong support from green energy advocates.
Indonesian Renewable Energy Society (METI), a green energy think tank based in Jakarta, said East Kalimantan had enough renewable energy resources to meet the electricity needs of the new capital city, which will occupy parts of North Penajam Paser regency and Kutai Kertanegara regency.
“We hope the new capital fully utilizes renewable energy in meeting its energy needs, considering the availability of renewable energy around the new capital’s location,” said METI chairman Surya Darma in a statement made available on Tuesday.
Electricity production in East and North Kalimantan remains overwhelmingly reliant on fossil fuel-fired power plants, which generated 99.96 percent of the 0.94 terawatt-hour (TWh) of power produced in the two provinces last year.
Furthermore, East Kalimantan’s installed renewable energy capacity of 21.2 megawatts (MW) is well below the provincial target of 89.6 MW as mandated under the General Planning for National Energy (RUEN) road map.
Indonesia as a whole, which produced 9.8 gigawatts (GW) of renewable power last year, also fell short of producing last year the 12 GW of renewable energy as mandated by the road map.
METI estimates that the new capital will need up to 4.5 TWh of electricity each year to power the daily activities of its 1.5 million residents.
