The technical and economic potential of renewables in Indonesia and scenarios for power system decarbonisation

Abstract

Indonesia has been dependent on its abundant coal reserves to meet its increasing electricity demand. The Indonesian government is aware of the negative environmental effects of coal combustion and pledged to become carbon neutral by 2060 or earlier by transitioning towards renewables. In principle, it is known that Indonesia has large renewable energy resources. However, these resources have not yet been mapped in high spatial and temporal resolution for the entire country and have not been assessed from an economic as well as electricity system perspective. This dissertation maps the technical and economic potential of solar, wind, and ocean thermal energy in Indonesia, and explores full power system decarbonisation scenarios. The mapped technical potentials amount to up to 22 PWh/year and could cover Indonesia’s expected 2050 7–23 times. Solar PV would become the center piece of Indonesia’s fully decarbonised power system with 468 GWp of PV covering half of 2050 electricity demand. Another key element are 50 GW of sub-sea power lines from Kalimantan and Sumatera to cost-effectively supply Indonesia’s economic center Java, where local available land for renewables is limited. Moreover, we found that recent tariffs limited the economic potential of renewables to the rural, less-developed East. The economic potential could be spread to the rest of the country via different policies, e.g., a carbon tax of 100 US$/tCO2e for onshore wind or a feed-in-tariff of 11.50 USct/kWh for solar PV. The findings of this dissertation are valuable for the bookkeeping of renewable energy resources in Indonesia and could motivate the revision of current decarbonisation targets towards more ambitious levels.