Indonesia’s renewable energy target likely to fail

Indonesia’s national renewable energy target for 2025 is likely to fail, says Marzan Aziz Iskandar, the country’s chief of the Agency for Assessment and Application of Technology (BPPT). “The result of our prediction of the existing energy policy from four scenarios is that none of them is in line or nearing the target,” Marzan said at the launching of a book entitled “Outlook Energy Indonesia 2009”, published by BPPT. The State Ministry for the Environment claims no new investments have been made into researching low-emission energy sources or building geothermal or hydropower energy power plants. Due to Indonesia’s heavy reliance on fossil fuels, by 2003 the country was responsible for releasing nearly 260 million tons of emissions into the atmosphere. Iskandar said if the government wanted to meet the target of alternative energy consumption, it should immediately be followed up by a presidential decree that would mandate the target to be raised annually until the national target is met in 2025. (September 17/October 8, 2009)