Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources Arifin Tasrif has encouraged the development of green industries in Papua due to the huge potential of new, renewable energy sources (NRE) in the eastern region of Indonesia. According to Ministry calculations, the NRE potential in Papua totals 380 gigawatts (GW), making up approximately 12.66 percent of the overall national NRE potential at its current level of 3,000 GW.
“In addition to the development of the green industry in Kalimantan, Papua also has enormous potential for the development of the green industry in the future. This is because Papua has about 380 GW of NRE potential,” Mr Arifin said at the Bisnis Indonesia Green Economy Forum 2023, Tuesday (6/6/2023). Arifin said, most of Papua’s NRE potential was supported by solar and hydro energy sources. According to him, the NRE potential can serve as strong capital to support future development of the green industry in the region.
Furthermore, he added that investment costs for the construction of NRE power plants are shrinking from year to year along with a decrease in the cost of production components. Consequently, he said, production and electricity costs from NRE plants can be more competitive to support new industries later. “The cost of building NRE power plants has decreased quite sharply, namely with the decline in lithium battery prices by 97 per cent in the last 30 years,” he said.
Meanwhile, the government has set a target for all domestic electricity demand to be supplied through NRE plants by 2060. Arifin said that the installed capacity of NRE plants at that time is expected to reach 700 GW. Meanwhile, the calculation refers to the Net Zero Emission (NZE) road map for Indonesia’s energy sector until 2060. According to the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources estimates, Indonesia needs an investment of more than US$1 trillion to switch to NZE until 2060. Moreover, the government will gradually terminate coal-fired power plant contracts sooner. He said his ministry is working to increase the installed capacity of clean electricity through massive super grid and smart grid infrastructure development in the next few years. The hope is that inter-island connectivity can be improved to match supply with demand for clean electricity.
“Super grid and smart grid infrastructure development is needed so that it can increase inter-island connectivity, reduce the impact of intermittency, overcome the divergence of local renewable energy sources and the location of high electricity demand,” he said.
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