The Nordic nations of Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden are on a big collective mission in Indonesia: to prove that there are no inherent losses in choosing sustainable energy over more affordable yet dirtier sources that continue to drive Indonesia’s ongoing infrastructure development.

And with Sweden’s Greta Thunberg and the topic of climate change reaching critical mass at last week’s United Nations-led Climate Action Summit, there is a need for Indonesia to improve its business climate to attract more “green” investments, envoys from the region have said.

The eco-friendly northern Europeans have welcomed the Indonesian public’s growing interest in the culture of sustainability, which has become particularly apparent among urban youth. But there is “more to be done” in promoting awareness about more issues like sustainable energy funding and the lack of political will to shift away from oil and gas, Denmark’s envoy said.

“Sometimes we have a feeling that Indonesian people look at the Nordic countries and how we have done nice things — which is good to replicate — but they also think that what we have done must have been very expensive and therefore [not affordable],” said Rasmus A. Kristensen, the Danish ambassador to Indonesia, in a limited interview with local media last week.

Together with his counterparts Finnish Ambassador Jari Sinkari, Norwegian Ambassador Vegard Kaale and Swedish Ambassador Marina Berg, Kristensen made an impassioned call for sustainability and climate change awareness ahead of this year’s Nordic Day celebrations, an event commemorating the national days of the four countries in Jakarta.

He said that while it was true that Nordic countries had switched to more sustainable practices by employing very costly and experimental technologies at the time, he insisted that prices had quickly gone down over the years.

“Most of them are cheaper than fossil fuels. But that realization has not really dawned in Indonesia, where politicians are still saying that it's a trade-off between affordability and sustainability,” Kristensen said on Thursday.

“That is false and that is something that we have demonstrated in the Nordic countries.”

According to the latest Renewable Power Generation Costs report released by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) earlier in May, the cost of renewable energy had dropped to a point where it could now compete in cost with oil, coal and gas-fired power plants.

Hydroelectric power costs an average 5 US cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) globally, while power plants based on onshore wind, solar photovoltaic (PV), biomass or geothermal energy is now usually below 10 cents per kWh, the report says. Such green energy sources are able to compete with the cost of developing fossil fuel-based power plants (5 to 15 cents per kWh), affirming IRENA’s prediction that renewables will be consistently cheaper than fossil fuels by 2020.

To be able to achieve its global sustainability goals, Norway’s Kaale said that the Indonesian government must increase the role of the private sector.

“They have the money [and] the competence,” the Norwegian ambassador said in the joint interview.

Sinkari said that Nordic companies were very hands-on with the projects in Indonesia, and they concluded that more sustainability-minded companies would be interested in investing if only the investment climate was improved.

Berg echoed this sentiment, saying that opening the country up to foreign investment would also mean it was opening up to more innovation and advanced technology, which she said “is definitely needed to be greener”.

According to the Nordic Energy Research, over one-third of the Nordic region’s energy supply comes from renewable sources, with biomass and waste finding the most use in generating electricity, heat and transportation fuels in Sweden, Finland and Denmark. Electricity in the region is also generated from hydropower in Norway, as well as a growing share of wind power.

Meanwhile, clean energy power plants in Indonesia make up just 12 percent of the country’s electricity generation, while coal-based electricity accounts for more than 50 percent of the energy mix, according to the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD).

President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo himself declared in Bali in August that “the era of oil and wood is over”, as Jakarta looks to the manufacturing and services sectors for faster economic growth.

But critics regret the tight grip that state-owned electricity off-taker PLN holds over the country’s energy mix. The company plans to sign an investment deal later this year for the construction of two additional units at its Suralaya coal-fired power station in Cilegon, Banten, even amid global calls to cut greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the catastrophic effects of global warming.

A report by the Canada-based IISD predicts that coal-based electricity will continue to take the lion’s share in Indonesia’s energy mix until 2027. (tjs)

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