Financing Key to Green Transition, Banks Shift Role to Strategic Partner
The large business opportunities from the sustainability agenda do not automatically make green projects easy to finance. Project readiness, risk profiles, cash flow certainty, and the complexity of financing structures are important factors that determine whether sustainable transition opportunities can be realised.
Bank DBS Indonesia assesses that these conditions are driving a shift in the role of banking. Banks are no longer sufficient as providers of capital, but also need to help companies prepare projects, determine financing structures, and find solutions capable of bringing together sustainability targets with commercial viability.
These findings are part of research by Bank DBS Indonesia with Tenggara Strategics titled The Sustainability Shift: Indonesia’s Industrial Landscape in Five Key Sectors, Opportunities and Risks. The research examines five strategic Indonesian sectors: energy and infrastructure, technology, media and telecommunications, food and agribusiness, health and pharmaceuticals, and metals and mining.
Director of Institutional Banking Group PT Bank DBS Indonesia Anthonius Sehonamin said the shift towards sustainable business requires a different approach in each sector. “However, the shift towards more sustainable business does not have a single path in every sector. Through this research, Bank DBS Indonesia seeks to provide more targeted insights regarding changes occurring in various strategic sectors, as well as opportunities and challenges that businesses need to anticipate,” Anthonius said on Thursday (20/8/2026).
In the research, DBS emphasises that sustainability opportunities must be translated into projects with technical and financial readiness. Therefore, financing instruments need to be adjusted to the characteristics of the sector and the risks faced.
Bank DBS Indonesia provides a number of instruments, ranging from sustainability financing, sustainability-linked financing, structured and blended finance, business lending, trade finance, to supply chain financing. These instruments are complemented by advisory services to help companies design and execute business transformation.
In the energy and infrastructure sector, for example, electrification needs create significant opportunities as well as new investment requirements. Indonesia’s electricity consumption is projected to increase from around 300 TWh in 2024 to more than 1,800 TWh in 2060. Meanwhile, renewable energy potential reaches around 3,687 GW, but its utilisation is still less than 0.5 percent.
Transmission barriers and project bankability are issues that must be addressed for this potential to be realised. Bank DBS Indonesia said it has supported financing for renewable energy projects, including geothermal, as well as green financing for the electrification ecosystem of two-wheeled electric vehicles and battery swap infrastructure.
In the technology sector, the development of AI is also changing investment needs. Growth in the connectivity-based telecommunications sector is slowing, but the digital economy continues to expand. Indonesia’s total digital economy GMV is estimated to reach around 99 billion US dollars in 2025.
These changes are driving demand for cloud, cybersecurity, and data centres. Chairman of the Indonesia Data Center Provider Organization (IDPRO), Hendra Suryakusuma, assesses that data centres have the potential to become a new growth engine.
“The momentum of AI growth makes data centres a new growth engine for Indonesia’s digital ecosystem. However, the availability of renewable energy and future policy certainty will be just as important as the size of the market potential in determining investment decisions,” Hendra said.