How does indonesian scientific production on renewable energy successfully support the policy design? A journey towards sustainable energy transition

Abstract

The aim to achieve the target of a 23% share of sustainable energies in the total Indonesia’s primary energy supply requires enormous amounts of works. Indonesia’s scientific knowledge production can support a successful transition to renewables. However, policy makers struggle to determine how the transition benefits from the scientific production on renewable. A bibliometric study using scientific publication data from the Web of Science (WoS) is used to probe how Indonesian scientific knowledge production can support the policy design for transition to sustainable energy. The seven focused disciplines are geothermal, solar, wind, hydro, bio, hybrid, and energy policy and economics. Based on the data from the above-listed disciplines, a deeper analysis is conducted, and implications to the policy design are constructed. The study reveals that bio energy is the focus of the research topics produced in Indonesia, followed by solar and hydro energy. Most RE research is related to the applied sciences. The innovation capability in the form of technology modifiers and technology adapters supports the transition to sustainable energy in Indonesia. The research on bio energy, however, is characterized by higher basic knowledge than research on solar and hydro energy. This suggests low barriers to the access to the resources and to the completion of bio research in Indonesia. Designing Indonesian energy policy by comprising discriminatively specific sustainable energy sources in the main policy instruments can therefore accelerate the sustainable transition and development.