Transitioning Remote and Island Communities to Renewable Energy

Side Event at 41st Senior Officials Meeting on Energy (SOME) in Indonesia

In conjunction with the ASEAN’s 41st Senior Officials Meetings on Energy (SOME), IRENA with the support from the ASEAN Chair Indonesia and Government of Canada organised an event to elicit dialogue on transitioning remote islands communities in the region, in particular in Indonesia, by adopting increased share of decentralised renewable energy as an alternative to fossil fuels, particularly diesel. Indonesia is the world’s largest archipelago comprising of around 18,110 islands and islets of which about 6000 are inhabited. SDG7 tracker shows that around 2.2 million people in Indonesia lacks access to electricity with majority living in rural islands, the number is more alarming for clean cooking where 42.3 million are without access to clean cooking fuels and technologies. This is beside 30 million people, mainly in the remote islands, which have unreliable access to electricity due to distribution challenges. The share of renewables in Indonesia’s total energy consumption is only 22%, with the renewable energy having only 12% of the total installed capacity in the country, mainly hydro power, geothermal and biomass. There is a huge solar PV and wind potential that still needs to be tapped to ensure clean and reliable energy to the island communities. The similar situation exits across different regional countries Philippines, Thailand, and Malaysia, to name a few. Government of Indonesia through state electricity company PLN and with support from different development partners like World Bank, Asian Development Bank, GIZ, and UNDP are pursuing rural and islands electrification projects, mainly through renewables.

The subject event gave a platform to different stakeholders to present their findings and experiences on renewable electrification of the remote island communities and how it can be strengthened and scaled-up with involvement of more partners and through RE financing and innovative business and delivery models. Participants also benefited from the presentations on the different programmes and initiatives on-going in the region on access to clean and reliable energy.

The session also relied on the findings from the guidebook in development by NRCan and IRENA with case studies and best practices from across the world on successful approaches of transitioning remote and isolated communities to renewable energy – different renewable technologies in use, strategic partnerships and delivery mechanisms deployed, level of community involvement and ownership, resulting socio-economic impacts, proven models for replication and scaling up. The aim of this exercise was to consult different stakeholders’ and gather their inputs that can support in mapping the country needs and subsequently developing the country programme to facilitate implementation.

See the agenda here.