Denmark assists Indonesia in green energy transition

The Danish Energy Agency is assisting Indonesian power plants optimize their environmental performance and become more flexible as Indonesia substitutes coal with renewable energy. Indonesia currently has 6% renewable energy in the primary energy mix, but has a policy target to increase this to 23% by year 2025.

Yesterday the Danish Energy Agency and the Embassy of Denmark in Indonesia hosted a workshop on improving energy efficiency in power plants in cooperation with the Indonesian Directorate General of Electricity. The workshop is the final workshop in a project under the Government-to-Government cooperation on energy between Indonesia and Denmark, which brings together Indonesian authorities and utilities to identify possible solutions for reducing CO2 emissions from power plants.

Notable optimizing potential
Prior to the final workshop Danish experts have visited three power plants. The site visits showed that the power plants are run by skilled staff but that a range of technical challenges still exist. There is a potential of optimizing the efficiency of the power plants by up to 7%. Additionally there is a potentially for improving the power plants flexibility at very low cost.

In order to realize this potential a number of initiatives were discussed during the workshop such as

• improving the continues measurement of power plant efficiency
• operating plants in automatic mode using controls system rather than in manual mode
• establishing dedicated energy efficiency teams
• improving the dispatch system and setting clear national goals for the improvement of energy efficiency in power plants.

Final report of recommendations to be delivered
The effort will lead to a report of final recommendations to the Directorate General of Electricity. The report will provide guidance to the Indonesian government on how to ensure that power plants emit the lowest possible CO2 emissions to the atmosphere.

Energy cooperation between Indonesia and Denmark
Indonesia and Denmark cooperate in a government-to-government cooperation on energy to strengthen the partnership between the two countries and to assist with the so-called “Indonesian Energy revolution”. A recent study supported by the Danish Energy Agency documented that with the current policy mix Indonesia can expect to save 10% of the energy consumption compared to business as usual in 2025, which still falls 7% short of the government’s target of 17% savings.

The Danish-Indonesian cooperation is embedded in a Strategic Sector Cooperation (SSC) programme. The SSC has three main work streams: Energy modelling, integration of renewable energy and energy efficiency. The SSC is a three-year programme from 2016-2018, where Denmark is contributing with technical assistance, policy assistance and practical experiences.