JAKARTA (Reuters) -Indonesia plans to offer to international investors opportunities to build 75 gigawatts (GW) of renewable power in the country in the next 15 years, its climate envoy said on the sidelines of the COP29 summit.
The plan is a commitment by Prabowo Subianto, who took office last month as the president of Indonesia, said Hashim Djojohadikusumo, Prabowo’s brother and Indonesia’s envoy to the 2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Baku, Azerbaijan.
Indonesia, one the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitters, has pledged to reach carbon neutrality by 2060, including by phasing out coal-fired power plants and replacing them with renewables.
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“There will be 100 GW of new energy that will be implemented in the new administration in the next 15 years, of which 75%, or 75 GW will be renewable energy,” Hashim said in a livestreamed speech on Monday in Baku.
The renewable projects would include solar, hydro, geothermal and nuclear power, Hashim said, without explaining plans for the remaining 25 GW.
Indonesia’s current installed power capacity is more than 90 GW, with more than half of that powered by coal and less than 15% by renewables. It currently has no nuclear capacity, a controversial topic in a country prone to earthquakes.
Indonesia’s state-power utility Perusahaan Listrik Negara is designing a new green transmission line spanning 70,000 km (43,500 miles), its chief executive Darmawan Prasodjo said from Baku, according to a company statement.
Indonesian authorities have often promoted the country’s potential in renewables, but it has not developed much renewable capacity due to subsidies for coal that make renewable tariffs unattractive for investors, analysts have said.
In his speech, Hashim also said Indonesia plans to offer carbon offset projects that could remove hundreds of millions of metric tons of carbon emission from the atmosphere. He did not elaborate on these projects.
Prabowo will also embark on a years-long project of reforesting 12.7 million hectares of severely degraded forests with funding that includes foreign sources, Hashim said, adding Bezos Earth Fund, Jeff Bezos’s $10 billion green funding project, was already interested.
Bezos Earth Fund said it has not committed to any specific programs or funding in Indonesia although it had discussions with leaders there “to understand the country’s nature-related priorities.”
(Reporting by Stanley Widianto; Editing by Gayatri Suroyo and Lincoln Feast.)
