RUNNING AGAINST TIME TO SAVE INDONESIAN INDUSTRY IN JAVA

Published by Prakarsa Jaringan Cerdas Indonesia, December 2022

Figure 1. Electricity Mapping-Super Grid and Renewable Energy Sharing Resources by MEMR RI

The G20 Meeting in Bali last month was a success for Indonesia. Among several successful results there are two prominent results related to Energy Transition in Indonesia. Indonesia, being a large coal producers, has been offered a financial scheme to accelerate its target of Net Zero Emission (NZE) by 2060. Those Schemes offer $20,8 Billion dollars from Just Energy Transition Partnership led by the US and $500 Million dollars for Asia Zero Emission Community led by Japan. Those are ”the carrots” for Indonesia to speed up transition from coal to green economy. It is easy to imagine that there will be “sticks” if Indonesia fails to achieve its NZE 2060 target or accelerate towards NZE 2050 that G7 countries mull about. Indonesian export oriented industry will be a soft target of the “Sticks" especially industry in Java Island, the power house of Indonesia. Industrial consumers in Java have been powered by JAMALI (Jawa Madura Bali). Interconnected grid, and they consumed around 76 TWh last year out of around 170 TWh total consumption in JAMALI and 257 TWh total Indonesia’ consumption. JAMALI produce approx 8 TWh of green energy from its hydro and geothermal plant, and we see that there are challenges in effort to increase the supply of green electron to JAMALI, namely:

Limited resources and land price will hamper the achievement of 106 GW of Solar and 40 GW of Wind by 2060 as targeted by MEMR. Supply chain for this amount of investment needs to be secure since Indonesia is still depend on imports for most of this capital investment.
JAMALI Grid needs to be upgraded to Smart Grid to adopt the penetration of VRE. Both Transmission and Distribution require hardening and smartening as well as Demand Management and Beyond KWh technology.
Location of RE sources are far away from Java, prompting the idea of Nusantara Supergrid, but HVDC and DC subsea cable are a new technology to PLN.
Regional development of international power trading through ASEAN POWER GRID has entered into multilateral trade via LTMS PIP, but the Indonesian Archipelago has yet to be integrated, and it seems the bureaucracy of the Government of Indonesia does not support the Idea of power trading. As Australia plan to export their RE to ASEAN through ASEAN RENEWABLE ENERGY HUB (AREH), it is becoming clear that Indonesia has to choose between competing in time to supply Singapore Hub or wait for RE import from Singapore Pool
A lot of harmonization of Law and Regulation needs to be done. The role of private sector participation in Transmission, Distribution and retail will also requires patching and upgrading work

We also noted the numbers of things that need to be considered and carried out to make plans after the G20 successful including:

Mapping the electricity needs of each region in Indonesia, starting from community groups to industry including those who are members of RE100, so that an even electricity distribution grid will be built. This is an opportunity for the Government, State-Owned Enterprises (BUMN) and other businesses to work together to meet each other's needs. It should be noted, in Indonesia's electricity the greatest demand is on the island of Java, namely 49.680.191 customers out of a total of 82.543.980 Indonesian customers or equivalent to 60.19%, therefore electricity is developing a lot in Java. From the power supply side in JAMALI, the power used by industry is 67,562 GW of the total customer use of 179,085 GW or equivalent to 37.73% in 2021[18]. However, it will be different if later all new renewable energy generators (RE) start to be intensively built, Java Island requires a lot of RE electricity supply and it requires other RE sources from outside Java Island. This statement must be considered for the future, RE supply for Java Island will be met from anywhere.

RE100 is an initiative led by Climate Group in collaboration with CDP and brings together leading companies around the world who are committed to using 100% RE electricity[1]. Currently (2022) as many as 370 multinational companies have joined the RE100 global initiative with a commitment to gradually use renewable energy until 2060. Of the 370 companies, many are currently conducting business activities in Indonesia[2]. Several lists of companies with electricity needs are located on the Java, Indonesia, including Danone, which requires at least 21 GWh[7], Google needs 220 MWh per month[5], H&M needs 85 GWh[10], HSBC needs 1500 MWh in 2020[3], JP Morgan Chase needs 75 MWh in 2020[4], Schneider Electric Cikarang which is estimated to require 912 MWh per year[6], NPan Brothers Tbk needs a minimum 2,0432 MWh[9] and others whose amount is not yet known. The total from this data is estimated at 111,129.04 MWh per year. Coca-Cola Amatil and Unilever, which are also part of RE100 and are big companies in Indonesia, have not announced their electricity needs, but they have built their own RE generators in installments. Coca cola amatil plans to expand the solar power program to several manufacturing facilities across Indonesia with an expected energy production capacity of 6052 MWh in the first year (2022)[1] and Unilever have developed solar with a capacity of 241,308 MWh per day and wind with a capacity of 77,781.39 GWh per day[16]. Apart from that, KALBE Nutritionals in the Kalbe Nutritionals Cikampek factory area, West Java has built a solar plant with a capacity of 2.1 GWh[15].

Map in detail the power potential of the island of Java and its surroundings. Indonesia's potential needs to be mapped because there is a possibility that it can flow to more demands in Indonesia, such as one of them to the island of Java. There are several RE generators that have the potential to meet electricity supply in Java Island from the presentation presented by the Secretariat General of the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources (MEMR) Rida Mulyana at the Sweden-Indonesia Sustainability Partnership (SISP) December 6 2022, including generation in Sumatra with hydropower of 8 GW, geothermal of 9 GW and solar of 148 GW and if we total it reaches 165 GW, in Kalimantan with an hydropower capacity of 54 GW and solar of 69 GW, and generation in JAMALI, namely geothermal of 8 GW and solar of 109 GW. This potential is not a small amount that Indonesia must realize its NZE faster than 2060, therefore it requires cooperation and a structured strategy as well as optimism from all stakeholders. Arsjad, The Chairman of B20 Indonesia from the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce (KADIN) also said that Indonesia has potential for solar energy of more than 400 thousand MW while its utilization is only 0.08% per year in 2021[12].

Building a domestic interconnectivity grid, namely by continuing the plan to build the Nusantara Supergrid which is one of our ideas (PJCI). Nusantara Supergrid has become one of the focuses in the development of electricity technology to build electrical interconnections in the Indonesian archipelago. This idea was published in the Press Release of the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources of the Republic of Indonesia number 47.Pers/04/SJI/2022 on 28 January 2022 with the headline ‘Ide Supergrid Nusantara Diapresiasi Dapat Tingkatkan Bauran EBT’ (Nusantara Supergrid Idea Appreciated Can Increase RE Mix)[20]. In the MEMR presentation at SISP December 6th 2022, it shows that the Nusantara Grid interconnection will begin to develop massively in 2030-2060, but there needs to be more mature development for the Papua region which has not yet been connected to the electricity grid with other large Indonesian islands.

On 15 November 2022, Sun Cable met with Minister of MEMR Arifin Tasrif to launch this Joint Study and discuss Sun Cable's long term commitment to Indonesia. Arifin revealed that Indonesia plans to build a super grid to address the imbalance between the location of renewable energy resources and areas that have high demand for electricity. Founder and CEO of Sun Cable, David Griffin said he wanted to share solar energy generation and long-distance transmission with Indonesia in shaping policy and technical approaches for island-to-island connectivity[19].

Open cooperation with appropriate regulations and agreements. Through the B20 Summit and the G20 Summit 2022 between the two parties, investment is at the heart of the discussion. Specifically, the value added benefits of downstream and upstream nickel, tin and copper are discussed in the context of Indonesia's new and renewable energy potential, and the development of green industrial zones, as Indonesia shifts its economic structure from dependence on raw materials and commodities[13]. Apart from JETP, AZEC, MEMR and KADIN also invited Sun Cable to participate in the B20 Energy Transition working group to help Indonesia continue to innovate in terms of human resources and technology in interconnectivity buildings[12].