In May, Indonesia’s state-owned electricity monopoly, PLN, vowed to increase its complement of natural gas power plants as part of a gambit, it said, to make its power supply cleaner and more reliable. The plan was part of a 10-year supply blueprint that also expanded use of all other sources of energy that it had previously used, as well as some new ones, including nuclear energy, to meet rising demand while transitioning away from dirtier coal plants and scaling up renewables. But gas was by far the energy source that would see the biggest gain initially: 9.3 gigawatts. If all the new gas generators ran at full capacity — albeit a rarity — that sort of juice would theoretically be enough to power half of Indonesia’s more than 70 million households. Cleaner-burning than coal and quicker to power up when needed, gas will lead PLN’s effort, at least in the short term, to address a rapid deterioration in the utility’s ability to meet spikes in demand from parts of its network, according to the 10-year plan, known as the RUPTL. But natural gas is still a fossil fuel, and by emphasizing it over renewables, PLN risks locking itself into an expensive source of energy at a time when most of the country’s gas-powered generating capacity is going unused. PLN may need to count on subsidies to keep electricity affordable. Coal would also see a large gain during the first year of the 10-year plan — 3.2 gigawatts — before tailing…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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