House set to draft geothermal bill
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The House of Representatives has formed a team to draft a bill on geothermal energy as part of its efforts to boost the development of energy resources, according to a leading legislator.
Irwan Prayitno, the head of the House's Commission VIII for energy, mineral resources, environment, science and technology, said Thursday the House had taken an initiative to propose the bill to the government because it deemed geothermal energy as a sustainable alternative energy source that the country could benefit from.
"We have a great reserve of geothermal resources which remain largely untapped," he told reporters on the sidelines of the fourth national meeting of the Indonesian Geothermal Association (INAGA).
Irwan said that the team that is working on the geothermal bill is comprised of three members of the House who are experts on energy. One of them is Tunggul Sirait, a noted lecturer on energy at the prestigious Bandung Institute of Technology and also a member of the Love the Nation Party (PDKB).
There is no deadline for the team to finalize the draft, he said.
Irwan noted that Indonesia needed a maximum strategy to boost geothermal energy development as an alternative energy.
Geothermal resources were, in the past, put under the supervision of state-owned oil company Pertamina, but the government transferred the supervisory rights to the regions in May 2000.
Thus far, there is no law regulating the energy source.
Minister of Energy and Mineral Sources Purnomo Yusgiantoro, in his written speech read out during the gathering, stated that a law on geothermal energy was needed in order to boost the development of the energy source.
The government will also withdraw its involvement in geothermal business to allow for fair competition in the industry, he said.
A number of geothermal power plant projects had been shelved since the 1997 economic crisis because they are expensive. The government is unable to finance projects that require foreign currency.
Prior to the crisis, there were 22 geothermal power projects approved by the government, but most of the projects had been delayed or shelved by the government in 1997 as part of the retrenchment efforts to cope with the economic crisis.
According to INAGA, Indonesia, potentially, has one of the world's largest supplies of geothermal resources. There are more than 244 geothermal energy fields across the nation with a potential power generation capacity of 20,000 MW.
All the resources are, however, located in remote areas, where modern infrastructure is almost non-existent. That is why the development of geothermal resources is expensive and the price for power from geothermal steam is more expensive than that of other energy sources.
Currently, Indonesia has a number of geothermal power plants with a combined capacity of 747.5 MW. The power plants are located in Kamojang, Salak, Darajat and Wayang Windu, in West Java; Lahendong in North Sulawesi and Sibayak in North Sumatra.