Indonesia boosts prices of renewable energies

Indonesia will raise the price of electricity from three types of renewable energies to encourage the country's overall renewable energy production.

Deputy Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Rudi Rubiandini announced that State electricity firm PLN must now pay more for electricity produced by geothermal, biomass and hydro power plants.

The price of geothermal electricity is now up to between 10 and 18.5 US cents per kilowatt-hour from theprevious 9 cents per kWh. Meanwhile, biomass electricity was recently priced between Rp 975 or10 cents and Rp 1,050 per kWh, from the previous Rp 656 per kWh.

The ministry is presently drafting another regulation that will similarly increase the price of hydro electricity from Rp 656 per kWh to between Rp 975 and Rp 1,050 per kWh.

Rudi explained that the exact prices of the electricity varied, depending on the locations of the power plants, among other factors.

He added that raising the prices was expected to make renewable energy projects more luring to investors, thus hopefully increasing the number of renewable projects, allowing the government to meet its 2025 renewable energy target.

The government has set a target of increasing the portion of electricity generated from renewable energies to 17 percent of the total electricity produced by 2025.

The figure currently stands at 5.7 percent, far below 49.7 percent of electricity produced from fuel-fired power plants, 24.5 percent from coal and 20.1 percent from gas power plants.

For more.