Indonesia ready to ratify Kyoto Protocol

Leony Aurora, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Indonesia has stated its readiness to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty intended to lower greenhouse gas emissions, which will make the government eligible for cash bonuses from the Clean Development Mechanisms (CDM) program.

Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources Purnomo Yusgiantoro announced the government's impending agreement to ratify the protocol in a written presentation delivered at an international workshop on biomass and clean fossil fuel power plant technology in Jakarta on Tuesday.

Tohmei Takekawa, chief representative of New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (Nedo), a body under Japan's ministry of trade, said that Indonesia would benefit from such ratification.

"Investors will come to facilitate renewable energy usage," he said.

The Kyoto Protocol was adopted by 159 countries in 1997 in Kyoto, Japan. Among the 117 countries that have ratified the protocol since, 40 of them are industrialized nations that agreed to bring their emissions down by 5.2 percent from their 1990 levels by 2012.

Indonesia's ratification will allow the developed nations to "trade" carbon emissions by giving money to developing countries, Indonesia's category, for the utilization of renewable energy production and the replacement of fossil fuels with renewable sources.

The donor countries will then be granted a reduction on their greenhouse gas emissions.

"The Dradjat geothermal power plant in Garut, West Java, has already applied for funding," said Yogo Pratomo, the Director General of Electricity and Energy Usage of the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources on the sidelines of the two-day workshop.

Although the United Nation's 9th conference on climate change in December made CDM for renewable energy operational, Indonesia is hoping that detailed guidelines on land use, land use change and forestry will be made available soon.

To make the Kyoto Protocol legally binding, one more country with heavy industrial pollution is still needed to sign up to meet the quorum -- 55 percent of the countries declared as polluters based on their 1990 carbon dioxide emissions.

Russia is expected to ratify the protocol in March, after its presidential election. It has had second thoughts on the treaty, because it fears the legal sanctions will transform the protocol into a business contract with unfavorable conditions.

The United States bailed out on the Kyoto Protocol in 2001, with the newly elected President W. Bush saying that the treaty would place too heavy a burden on the U.S. economy.