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Indonesia’s clean energy dream: a victim of coronavirus, or politics?
- Although blessed with abundant sources of clean energy, Indonesia’s potential remains untapped as it focuses its resources on defeating Covid-19
- Analysts say the sector is being held back by the political elite, who ‘don’t want to lose the opportunities of securing profits’ from coal, oil and gas
Reading Time:5 minutes
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Denia Isetianti has long suffered from climate anxiety – the mix of depression and affliction arising from confronting the facts that the globe is heading towards a climate catastrophe. The feelings grew stronger after she became a parent.
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“What’s going to happen to my kids?”, the 34-year-old mother of two asked.
She and her family live in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta, one of the most polluted cities in the world. Parts of the city are expected to be submerged by 2050 as a result of rising sea levels and excessive extraction of groundwater.
Denia, a corporate lawyer, believes that living a more environmentally friendly lifestyle is the only way to ease her fears of impending doom. In 2019, she took a huge step toward fulfilling that goal by building an eco-friendly house with solar panels on the roof even though the modules did not come cheap.
But in the world’s fourth most populous country, Denia is one of just 2,346 electricity customers who had voluntarily installed rooftop solar panels on their houses by June 2020.
Situated in the Equatorial Pacific Ocean, where solar, water and geothermal resources are abundant, Indonesia has plenty of renewable energy options, yet the potential for using them remains untapped.
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