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General Electric chief executive Jeffrey Immelt wants Barack Obama to “sell hard” in Indonesia as he extols US expertise in industries such as clean energy. He will have to work fast as Premier Wen Jiabao will make China’s sales pitch in Jakarta next month.

President Obama’s trip to his childhood home, already delayed once and currently scheduled for Tuesday through Thursday, is key to a pledge to boost US exports and “lead the global economy” in providing alternatives to fossil fuels. Southeast Asia’s biggest economy, which Immelt included last week among nations that may provide the growth “surprise” of the next decade, has the world’s largest geothermal reserves.

Winning orders for plants that harness the earth’s heat to produce electricity is a test of the United States’ ability to compete with China for exports in a region where its investments lag the European Union and Japan. China profited from Indonesia’s earlier energy needs, supplying coal-fired plants in the last decade, said Ravi Krishnaswamy, Singapore-based Asia-Pacific director for Frost & Sullivan, an energy consultancy.

“It’s sort of scary because China has moved so quickly and they’ve been so efficient in developing their industry,” said Peter du Pont, who runs an Asia clean-energy program in Bangkok funded by the US Agency for International Development. The United States risks “losing whole markets if they’re not active,” he said.

Indonesia’s more than 17,000 islands straddle the Pacific’s “ring of fire” of active volcanoes, providing a key source of energy. Chevron, Houston-based Halliburton and Osaka-based Itochu are among the sponsor of the World Geothermal Congress in Bali next month.

Indonesia was Asia’s third-fastest growing economy behind China and India last year. The government of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono plans to spend $17.3 billion to meet power demand by adding 10,000 megawatts of capacity — equivalent to 10 nuclear plants — with more than half coming from cleaner sources including geothermal energy.

Obama’s scheduled visit will be followed in May by US Commerce Secretary Gary Locke’s trade missions to Indonesia and China. “Indonesia is going to be a vast, steady market for green technologies,” Locke said in a speech in Washington yesterday. “There are regional neighbors, for instance, like China and India that are racing with us to meet Indonesia and the world’s demand for renewable energy.”

Wen is set to make his first visit to Indonesia in April, according to Indonesia’s Foreign Ministry.

“In a time when millions of Americans are out of work, boosting our exports is a short-term imperative,” Obama said last week at the annual meeting of the US Export-Import Bank. Speaking at the same conference, Immelt faulted the US government for being too “timid” on selling exports. He urged Obama to push the company’s freight locomotives, telling him to “sell hard.”

GE is involved in projects in Indonesia ranging from geothermal plants to turning landfill waste to energy, said Gatot Prawiro, GE Energy’s power & water growth director for the country. Indonesia’s demand for power has outpaced generation by 8 percent a year for the past decade, Prawiro said, citing the state power utility. “We believe a large part of this demand can be met by cleaner energy,” he said.

 

Bloomberg