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This study estimates the influence of income, electricity price, oil price, urbanization, and Asian economic crisis to electricity demands in residential, industrial, and commercial sectors of Indonesia using autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) method. Our estimations reveal that electricity demands in all sectors during the period of 1969–2015 are significantly affected by income and urbanization in which the demands in all sectors are elastic to urbanization but inelastic to income. On the other hand, electricity price only significantly affects residential electricity demand while oil price does not have significant influence on electricity demands in all sectors. The electricity demands in residential and commercial sectors are also significantly inelastic to the number of electricity customers while Asian economic crisis in 1998 only affects industrial electricity demand. These findings are like most previous studies for other country cases but not to previous Indonesian studies that had suffered from the cointegration issues.

Abstract Indonesia has large renewable energy resources that are not always located in regions where they are needed. Sub-sea power transmission cables, or island links, could connect Indonesia’s high-demand islands, like Java, to large-resource islands. However, the role of island links in Indonesia’s energy transition has been explored in a limited fashion. Considering Indonesia’s current fossil fuel dependency, this is a critical knowledge gap. Here we assess the role of island links in Indonesia’s full power sector decarbonisation via energy system optimisation modelling and an extensive scenario and sensitivity analysis. We find that island links could be crucial by providing access to the most cost-effective resources across the country, like onshore photovoltaics (PV) and hydropower from Kalimantan and geothermal from Sumatera. In 2050, 43 GW of inter-island transmission lines enable 410 GWp of PV providing half of total generation, coupled with 100 GW of storage, at levelised system costs of 60 US$(2021)/MWh. Without island links, Java could still be supplied locally, but at 15% higher costs due to larger offshore floating PV and storage capacity requirements. Regardless of the degree of interconnection, biomass, large hydro, and geothermal remain important dispatchable generators with at least 62 GW and 23% of total generation throughout all tested scenarios. Full decarbonisation by 2040 mitigates an additional 464 MtCO2e compared to decarbonisation by 2050, but poses more challenges for renewables upscaling and fossil capacity retirement.

Abstract Indonesia has a target of achieving 23% of renewable energy share in the total energy mix in 2025. However, Indonesia does not have accurate and comprehensive data on renewable energy potentials, especially wind energy. This article aims to assess the theoretical potential of wind speed and to visualize the wind speed by province for the entire Indonesia. Our assessment relied on the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model using Four-Dimensional Data Assimilation technique, also known as Nudging Newtonian relaxation. The robustness of our analysis is confirmed by using high-resolution data from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction–Final (NCEP - FNL) and Cross-Calibrated Multi-Platform (CCMP) Reanalysis satellite data. This study shows the WRF method is a feasible option to estimate wind speed data.

Abstract Ecological concerns stemming from local energy usage generates more severe impacts on mountain economies, such as the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) — a region consisting of eight nation boundaries. However, little is known about the regional energy consumption pattern and trends in the HKH due to data scarcity making it difficult to devise effective evidence-based energy policy and planning strategies. The purpose of this study is to bridge the existing data deficit gap in the HKH region. We first estimate the HKH-specific energy consumption patterns in 2013 and then forecast the sectoral energy consumption of the region for the period 2013–2030 by using the Long-range Energy Alternatives Planning (LEAP) system model. Our results show the dominance of residential sector (57%) and conventional biomass energy (50%) in the energy consumption landscape of the HKH. Industrial activities in HKH regions are still relatively underdeveloped compared to overall national averages. Energy consumption in the HKH region is around 5% of that in the HKH countries but is projected to increase from 5.89 million terajoule (TJ) in 2013 to 7.04 million TJ in 2030. The findings emphasise the importance of further investments and research in creating and periodically updating an HKH-specific energy database to overcome data-driven development challenges.

This study develops a hybrid energy agent-based model that integrates the input-output analysis, environmental factors and socioeconomic characteristics of rural and urban households in Indonesia. We use the model to estimate the effects of four solar energy policy interventions on photovoltaic (PV) investments, government expenditure, economic outputs, CO2e emissions and the uses of steel, aluminium, concrete and energy. The results of our analysis call for the abolition of the PV donor gift policy, the improvement of production efficiency in the PV industry and the establishment of after-sales services and rural financing institutions. A 100 W peak (Wp) PV under this recommendation would be affordable for 80.6% of rural households that are projected to be without access to electricity in 2029. Net metering is the most effective policy for encouraging urban people to invest in PV in a situation where fossil energy prices are increasing and PV prices are declining. A donor gift policy may induce USD 51.9 new economic outputs for every Wp of PV operating to capacity in 2029, but would require a subsidy of USD 18.6/Wp. The recommended policies do not require subsidies and reduce CO2eq emissions and the consumption of aluminium, energy, steel and concrete by between 83.1% and 89.7% more than the existing policy. Several policy implications are discussed in response to these findings. As a contribution to energy modelling literature, the model can be used for other developing countries by merely changing its data.