ASEAN Energy Policy: Case of Indonesia
COUNTRY OVERVIEW
Indonesia is the largest country in Southeast Asia in terms of land area and population. It is 17,508 islands with a total land area almost two million square kilometers are inhabited by 237,641,326 people (BPS, 2010). Indonesia has experienced an increasingly strong economic expansion since recovering from the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Economic growth accelerated to a 10-year high of 6.5% in 2011 (BI, 2012), despite unstable global financial markets and a slowing world economy.
As a consequence of the relatively high economic growth and rapid increase of population, energy consumption in Indonesia has been growing at a high rate. Although currently the country is one of the worlds’s largest producers and exporters of natural gas and coal, this former member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Country has to import the crude oil and petroleum fuel in order to meet the one-third of demand. Energy access is also one concern as per 2011, the electrification rate still laid on 73%. As fossil energy resources are finite, an efforts need to be undertaken to optimize the utilization of energy resources, especially the renewable energy sources where its potential is relatively abundant. With its relatively isolated islands and regions, provision of basic energy needs by renewable energy is an appropriate option. Read more