Indonesia to Hold Conference on Renewable Energy

Tri Listiyarini

The Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry will hold an international conference on renewable energy and energy conversion in July to exchange knowledge about and attract investors in the sector, an official said on Thursday.

The conference, EBTKE Conex 2012, will be held in Jakarta with the exhibition held from July 17-19, said Jajang Sukarna, an Energy Ministry official.

Jajang said that the conference, the first of its kind in Indonesia, would invite participants from Brazil, Germany, Malaysia, China and India, and that it would become an annual event.

The need to develop renewable energy was becoming more urgent all the time as Indonesia consumed and sold its natural resources at higher and higher rates, Jajang said.

“The growth in demand cannot be matched by supply and the result is that the next generations will very likely experience a crisis in energy resources,” Jajang said.

Indonesia needed to do more on that front, he said.

“The potential of renewable energy is quite big in Indonesia but its use is far from being optimum,” Jajang said. “Various policies to support and encourage the development of renewable energies have been issued but these are not yet enough.”

The Energy Ministry wanted one quarter of Indonesia’s energy to come from renewable sources by 2025 and aimed to reduce the country’s greenhouse gas emissions by 26 percent by 2020, Jajang said.

The conference, to be opened by the president, would help promote an understanding of Indonesia’s energy needs, he said.

The conference will include 10 discussion sessions that will profile various sectors in the renewable energy and energy conversion fields, including regarding their use, prospect, research and technology.
 
More than 140 stands had been confirmed for the exhibition, he added.

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