Bioenergy as an Alternative Energy Source: Progress and Development to Meet the Energy Mix in Indonesia

Abstract

Government policies in Indonesia have been pushing in the past decade towards 100% electrification target by end of 2020. However, many of the new energy policies are reused from previous policies designed for different objectives causing overlap in policies between the central and local governments. Local distributed generation are not fully controlled by local stakeholders and community, and with the lack of long-term planning, continuous government incentives and support, they are bound to fail due to the lack of maintenance. The use of solid biomass for household has decreased significantly due to the government support for LPG stoves that overtaken other government projects supporting biomass. Small-scale biomass research is showing good progress towards the implementation of novel methods for biomass utilization. However, majority of the medium and large-scale projects are still relying on old technologies such as direct biomass combustion in boilers rather than the more environment friendly gasification technology. Another major biomass contribution to national energy mix is through liquid biofuels. This work summarizes the current and prospective energy mix in Indonesia and the main conventional and non-conventional energy sources and their environmental concerns. This work also gathers the latest local biomass research and biomass power plant projects.