Indonesia plans 10GW of nuclear power in major renewable energy push, presidential aide says

JAKARTA – Indonesia plans a major expansion in renewable energy by 2040, including the introduction of 10 gigawatts (GW) of nuclear power, and expects contracts to be given in the next five years, a senior aide of President Prabowo Subianto said in an interview.

This would more than double the current capacity as Indonesia, one of the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, aims for carbon neutrality before 2050, said Mr Hashim Djojohadikusumo, Mr Prabowo’s brother and the President’s special envoy for energy and climate.

“Many of the contracts will be... in the next five years... especially the nuclear (contracts) because of the long lead times,” he told Reuters from New York.

By 2040, he said Indonesia aims to have an additional 103GW power capacity, made up of 75GW from solar, wind, geothermal and biomass, 10GW from nuclear energy, and the remaining 18GW from gas.

Indonesia’s current installed power capacity is around 90GW, more than half of it from coal. Renewables account for less than 15GW of the current capacity, and the country has no nuclear power plants.

Russian state nuclear firm Rosatom, China National Nuclear Corp, Britain’s Rolls-Royce, France’s EDF and the US small modular reactor firm NuScale Power Corp have shown interest in Indonesia’s nuclear power ambitions, Mr Hashim said.

“I think it’s conceivable that they will co-invest with an institution like Danantara,” he said, referring to the recently launched Danantara Indonesia sovereign wealth fund.

Mr Hashim said no decisions had been made about the location of the nuclear plants, a controversial topic in a country that straddles the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire, where different plates on the earth’s crust meet, increasing the risk of earthquakes and volcanic activity.

He said the western part of Indonesia was suitable for single-site nuclear plants, where a single unit can generate around 1GW of power, while floating small-modular reactors generating up to 700 megawatts (MW) were suitable in the east.

While the government is committed to energy transition, he said it would take a balanced approach to achieving that goal as the President tries to lift the country’s economic growth rate to 8 per cent from around 5 per cent in recent years.

“The government does not want to commit economic suicide. There’ll be no phase-out, but there will be a phase-down,” he said.

A deal with the Asian Development Bank for the early retirement of the 660MW Cirebon-1 coal-fired plant in West Java province, which is backed by the US$20 billion (S$26.2 billion) Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP), is expected to be completed in the next few months, Mr Hashim said.

Concerns about the financial and legal risks of shutting the plant have been a stumbling block, and a new challenge to the energy transition has been the US government’s withdrawal from the JETP. REUTERS