JAKARTA, Jan 6 (Reuters) – Aji Tri Atmojo lives in a traditional Javanese house with wooden walls on the outskirts of the Indonesian capital of Jakarta, but his rustic home got a modern touch after he installed a row of solar panels on his roof.
Since putting them up in 2020 at a cost of 10 million rupiah ($702.25), he has halved his monthly electricity bill and within five years the investment should break even.
With a patchy track record on renewables, Indonesia’s energy mix is still heavily dependent on coal but if early signs of a jump in the take up of solar are sustained, it could have a transformative impact on Southeast Asia’s biggest economy.
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“Because nearly all electricity generation in Indonesia … comes from coal. This way (my family) can reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” Aji told Reuters. Indonesia aims to wean itself off coal and become carbon neutral by 2060 or sooner.
Despite being a tropical archipelago of 17,000 islands blessed with year-round sunshine, Indonesia ranks last for solar power capacity among the G20 nations.
But demand is starting to pick up in the world’s fourth-most populous country, driven by policy changes, a steep fall in the prices of Chinese-made photovoltaic cells (PV) and environmentally conscious middle-class consumers such as Aji, an engineer at a dairy company.
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