Indonesia and Its Energy Problem

Indonesia and Its Energy Problem

Indonesia is a country which has five big islands with various energy consumption in each islands. Time after time, with the highly increasing of the populations, Indonesia now facing the problems which is related with the sustainable energy and the skyrocketing demand of energy. Energy is an important engine of economic growth, on which both poverty reduction and shared prosperity depend. Most economic activity would be impossible without energy, but for a long time, Indonesia has a really big reliance on dirty and subsidised fossil fuels, it is used by households, industrials, and many more. The energy mixes in Indonesia based on five main resources; these are crude oil, natural gas, coal, hydropower, and renewable energy. Although the country encourages utilizing renewable energy, the contribution is only around 3%. Indonesia today consumes about 500 million barrels of oil every year with and annual increase of 10 million barrels. Indonesia now holds 39 per cent of oil for energy supply, but as we know, oil is not a renewable energy resources. If Indonesia continues to use the big numbers of oil without any alternative enery resources, in the next few years, Indonesia will be completely dependent on importing of its energy needs. (Subianto, 2011) At the present, the main factor of high consumption of energy in Indonesia is the explosion of population, within 20 years, the number of population in Indonesia has increased from 170 million in early 1980’s to 240 million now. According to the Green Policy Paper released by the Finance Ministry, total energy demand in Indonesia is growing by around 7 per cent per year. It continues to increase since the number of population growth significantly.

More than 50% of Indonesians have their own vehicle, this is really a big problem. Only a few of Indonesians use the public transportation to go to other place. Why this could be happened? It is regarding to the time efficiency, most of Indonesian think that by using their own vehicle, it will make them faster to go somewhere, but critically it will make the higher consumption of fuel. In order to make a sustainable enery for Indonesians, government have given the solution to make a subsidies energy to the poor households, but in other side, many reports and research has shown that the subsidies discourage the development of alternative or renewable energy sources. Related to the sustainable energy, actually Indonesia has so many potential renewable energy resources such as geothermal, wind, energy, and biomass. As we make the transition to other sources of supply, we need to make sure that we do not squander our past investment in fossil fuel infrastructures.

Although Indonesia possesses a variety of renewable energy resources, including geothermal, solar, micro-hydro, wind and bio-energy, but it is not balance with the system of the government in Indonesia and the mindset of Indonesians. The problem is there is no policy framework that explained about the roles of  local government and central governments related to the understanding the implications of pursuing the renewable energy. Indonesia has a decentralized system which allowed the local government to have a right for controlling their own energy resources, but the obstacle is the local governments don’t have a good framework to handle this. So there is a need for changes the government policy. After that, In the real fact, Indonesians are still rely on the fossil energy, for somehow, the renewable energy doesn’t always work, like sun doesn’t shine every day, wind doesnt blow hard everyday, and many more. That’s why Indonesians still think that fossil energy is better and can be used everyday. Indonesians need adequate, reliable, and competitively priced modern energy which is very essential for business development, job creation, income generation, and international competitiveness, after that government should Improving the quality of life for Indonesians by ensuring access to energy services.

Then, governments with the citizens have to make some collaboration to make steady progress in the development and introduction of cleaner fossil fuel resources and generation technologies; renewable energy resources and generation technologies; and more efficient end-use technologies.Beside that, there should be an approachment, like efficiency-oriented approach which can directs us to look for ways to reduce environmental impacts and improve efficiency along the entire energy “supply-chain.”  The other solution is make coordinating long-term sustainable energy development. It is very useful for controlling the energy from the private sectors. More broadly, making the transition to a more diversified (and hopefully more sustainable) energy system will require continuous improvements in both technologies and management systems. Such programs need not be cost prohibitive however, since without such initiatives many developing countries, such as Indonesia would need to import greater amounts of fuel, and develop a larger, less efficient energy infrastructure. Different energy technologies and management systems will be required by country and region, depending upon available local resources, skills, and initial economic, environmental and social conditions. There is also need of improving the public transportation, the natural gasses, technology, and management to make sure that Indonesia has the efficiency, reliabolity, and sustainability of energy. The development and deployment of new energy sources and efficient technologies is clearly a key element in the transition to a sustainable energy infrastructure.