Indonesia planning to offer geothermal fields for power bids
Alexander Richter
17 Feb 2009
The Indonesian government plans to offer 15 geothermal fields in power development tenders, which need investment of about $4.5 billion and are expected to generate a total of 1,500 megawatts (MW) of electricity, said Bambang Setiawan, director general of mineral, coal and geothermal at the energy ministry."
“Indonesia, said to be the world’s third-largest producer of greenhouse gases, hopes to have an additional 4,700 megawatts of clean geothermal generating capacity by 2014, a senior official at the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry said on Monday.”, so the Jakarta Post.
“The project is expected to reduce consumption of oil-based fuels and to reduce the size of the annual subsidy that the government has to pay state-owned electricity utility PT Perusahaan Listrik Negara, or PLN. However, environmentalists warn that the coal-fired plants create a new problem — pollution.
“Under the second round of the expansion program, 48 percent of the power will be generated by geothermal energy, while another 12 percent will be from hydro and other renewable resources,” Bambang Setiawan, the ministry’s director general of mineral, coal and geothermal resources, said at a mining seminar in Jakarta on Monday.
Indonesia has estimated geothermal energy potential of 27,510 MW, or about 40 percent of the world’s total potential, Bambang said. The country has 256 geothermal sites that could be developed, while currently installed geothermal capacity stands at 1,052 MW, with most of the power being produced by state oil and gas company PT Pertamina.
Separately, Sugiharto Harsoprayitno, the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry’s director of geothermal and groundwater development and management, said foreign investors from countries including Japan, Germany and the United States had expressed interest in developing geothermal projects for carbon credits.”
So as part of this project, “the government plans to offer 15 geothermal fields in power development tenders, which need investment of about $4.5 billion and are expected to generate a total of 1,500 megawatts (MW) of electricity, said Bambang Setiawan, director general of mineral, coal and geothermal at the energy ministry.”
