A6 Jakarta Globe Friday, April 23, 2010Indonesia

Titania Veda

Garut, West Java. Beneath Darajat Mountain lies the village of Sirnasari. The bread and but-ter of this community of 8,500 people is jacket-making and oth-er cottage industries. But fre-quent blackouts, due to infra-structure problems such as de-caying or falling transmission poles, cause production delays that affect these small entrepre-neurs’ profit margins.

“When there’s a blackout, we really feel it because we can’t pro-duce at work. And then we can’t pay our electricity bills and our electricity at home gets cut off,” said Tati, a housewife whose hus-band makes jackets.

Energy experts mockingly re-fer to Indonesia’s current energy woes, complete with blackouts and shortages, as the “dark ages.” The country has been beset by power outages as infrastructure has failed to keep pace with growth. The existing generating capacity is 30,500 megawatts, a power deficit of 4,555 MW, ac-cording to data released by state-owned power company PT Peru-sahaan Listrik Negara in Janu-ary. Analysts say the shortages have hurt industry and deterred investment.

Untapped SolutionWith the government’s “fast-track” program to create a new power supply still in the works, the central government is in-creasingly touting geothermal power as a clean, renewable and environmentally friendly energy source. Located within the Pacif-ic Ring of Fire, the most seismi-cally active place on earth, Indo-nesia has among the world’s larg-est geothermal energy reserves.

The fast-track program’s sec-ond phase, estimated to cost $12 billion and targeted for comple-tion in 2014, mandates that around 4,000 MW of electricity come from geothermal power plants.

The Energy Ministry hopes to attract the needed billions from global investors at the 2010 World Geothermal Congress & Exhibi-tion beginning on Sunday in Bali. A key geothermal event, the con-gress is expected to attract around 2,500 technical experts, officials and investors from 80 countries.

Geothermal energy could conceivably power the entire ar-chipelago, but it has barely been tapped. Currently, just 1,189 MW of geothermal power are being produced in 15 plants in Java and Bali — only 4.2 percent of the country’s potential capacity. The Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources says the country may have enough geothermal re-serves to produce up to 27,170 MW in 265 locations including Sumatra and Sulawesi.

If that’s not enough to con-vince decision-makers to em-brace geothermal, there are ad-ditional cash benefits. Using geo-thermal power instead of coal-fired power plants could enable operators to sell carbon credits because the plants are low-emitters. According to En-ergy Ministry data, Indonesia

could earn up to $477 million by 2014 in carbon credits generated from low-emission geothermal projects alone.

It remains to be seen how long it will take before Indonesia be-comes a geothermal power. The village of Sirnasari, for example, lies in a valley at the foot of Dara-jat Mountain, some 10 kilometers below a geothermal power plant run by a local unit of US energy giant Chevron. Regardless, it has its share of power blackouts.

According to Chevron spokes-man Usman Slamet, Chevron is contracted by state electricity utility PLN to supply 259 MW of power from the Darajat plant, which lies around 2,000 meters above sea level, directly to the Ja-va-Madura-Bali electricity grid. Electricity for Sirnasari, there-fore, comes via PLN and not the mountains.

‘Poisoned Steam’Aside from the complaints from local villagers around the district of Garut about the blackouts, the central and local government faces another problem: wide-spread misinformation and igno-rance about geothermal energy.

“People I speak to think it’s re-lated to Lapindo,” said Erfan Hutagaol, head of the Energy Ministry’s geothermal business effort section, referring to the mudflow disaster in East Java. “And there are those who are al-ready using geothermal for tour-ism purposes, such as natural hot springs. And they’re afraid the hot springs will disappear if we

develop geothermal energy.”One a recent day in Pasirwan-

gi, a subdistrict of Garut, a local farmer named Amat was off-loading sacks of potatoes from a truck. In the distance, beyond the potato and vegetable fields, white puffs of steam from the Chevron plant rose above the mountains.

Amat, a lifelong resident of Pa-sirwangi, has lived in the area be-fore and after Chevron signed its geothermal contract in 1984. Al-though he lives and works only about 5 kilometers from the plant, Amat admitted that he doesn’t know what geothermal is or how it works. He said he sticks to his potato and vegetable farming, al-though he’s been facing problems with low crop yields. Now 40 years old, he said that life as a farmer was better prior to Chev-ron’s arrival.

“Farmers complain that their crops get viruses from the steam,” Amat said.

Ibang Lukmanurdin, program

manager for the Pasundan Peas-ants Union (SPP) in Garut, added, “Numerous farmers and laborers claim the land is being polluted by the steam. We have engineers who can exploit solar energy and bio-gas... so leave the [geother-mal] wealth alone.”

“There is poison in the steam. You can smell it,” said Asep, 25, a farm hand in Pasirwangi, refer-ring to the noticeable smell of sul-fur in the air.

However, Ryad Chairil, an en-ergy analyst with the Center for Indonesian Energy and Resourc-es Law, denied that steam origi-nating from geothermal plants, not to mention the earth, con-tained harmful poisons.

“The steam is derived from the bottom of the earth. If it con-tained poison, then the land sur-rounding it would be unhealthy. If the land can grow grass or rice, it means the land is basically healthy and the steam has no ef-fect,” he said.

As for the foul smell, Chairil said, “The smell of sulfur is like a fart. It will not affect the land.”

Hadian Hendracahya, a pro-gram staffer at the Association for the Advancement of Small Businesses in Bandung (Pupuk), who does community develop-ment work in Garut district, also rejected claims that geothermal steam is making the land barren.

“Logically, it doesn’t make sense,” he said. A rice farmer himself, Hadian said the farmers weren’t considering that their lands could be yielding less due to over-cultivation or the exces-

sive application of harmful chemical pesticides.

Greener OptionWhile officials from the energy minister and energy experts con-cede that any resource develop-ment project will have an envi-ronmental impact, they insist that environmental damage from geothermal is minimal com-pared to oil, gas and coal produc-tion. They also said that geother-mal projects use less land: on av-erage, a plant producing 200 Megawatts covers 37 hectares, while an open pit coal mine re-quires the clearing of hundreds of hectares of land.

That said, there are still envi-ronmental concerns about geo-thermal energy. An estimated 42 percent of Indonesia’s potential geothermal reserves are located within protected or conservation forests, the latter of which is off limits to geothermal production according to 1999 forestry law. The law does allow geothermal

plants in production forests as well as protected forests.

The Ministry of Forestry is preparing a new draft law that would allow the drilling of geo-thermal wells in conservation forests as it seeks to boost elec-tricity generation.

But that may only further an-ger local populations if they don’t understand how geothermal pro-duction works, or think it’s de-stroying their local environ-ments, Hadian said. Out of the dozen farmers and villagers in Garut’s Pasirwangi and Sa-marang subdistricts who spoke to the Jakarta Globe, only one un-derstood the definition of geo-thermal energy and its potential benefits.

“I know that geothermal is an energy that is kept inside the earth, and if managed well, it can be used for future energy,” said Rian Herdiana, a 20-year-old vil-lager from Sirnasari who received entrepreneurial training from Chevron as part of its community development program.

PLN, the Energy Ministry and Chevron insist that they run edu-cation campaigns for the public about geothermal energy, includ-ing school visits in Garut and open tours of the plant.

“There’s always a communi-cation gap between everyone. The local government is the one responsible for disseminating in-formation to the villagers,” Chairil said.

But villagers don’t seem too perturbed by their lack of under-standing, mostly because their

main concern is their livelihoods. In fact, the main gripe that resi-dents of Garut’s subdistricts have about the Chevron plant is that the company hires workers from outside the area.

“There has been no progress in the area because it’s very diffi-cult to place our local people in the company. These days, the ap-plication process is difficult and you need money to bribe people to get a job there,” Amat said.

Multinational corporations such as Chevron are often ac-cused of discriminatory hiring practices.

However, Usman countered that between 85 and 90 percent of the 400 staff at the Chevron plant is from Garut district.

That said, geothermal proj-ects also require skilled workers and many Pasirwangi residents such as Asep don’t go beyond pri-mary school. He said he’s been working as a farm laborer since he was 13 years old.

“The problem is each village wants a monopoly, so it’s under-standable that people will say only a small section from their village work in Darajat,” Usman said.

Meanwhile, other young vil-lagers such as Rian are pinning their hopes on geothermal giants like Chevron to help their villages progress in other ways.

“I hope Chevron can come up with the technology so there are no more increases in the basic electricity tariff and no more electrical disturbances here,” Rian said.

Geothermal Potential Remains UntappedPower Play: Villages near plants still experience blackouts

Camelia Pasandaran & Fidelis E Satriastanti

A coalition of activist groups on Thursday reported 12 public of-ficials to the presidential Judi-cial Mafia Eradication Task Force for suspected involvement in a major illegal logging case in Riau province.

The public officials include one governor, four district heads, two high-ranking police officials, an official from the Ministry of Forestry and four former officials from Riau’s forestry office.

The coalition said that in De-cember 2008, the Riau Police halted a probe into 13 companies suspected of illegal logging after being advised by “an expert” that the com-panies had not broken any laws.

The case had been investigated for about t wo yea rs u nder Sutjiptadi, who was then head of the Riau Police, the activists said, but was immedi-ately put on hold when it came to the current deputy chief of its crim-inal investigation divi-sion, Hadiatmoko.

Other high-ranking

officials accused of involvement in the dropping of the case in-cluded Riau Governor Rusli Zae-nal and the former Forestry Min-ister MS Kaban.

“We think the decision to stop the investigation is controversial and suspect that a ‘forestry mafia’ is involved,” said Febri Diansyah, legal coordinator at Indonesia Corruption Watch, which was part of the coalition.

He said the groups had leveled 15 charges against the public of-ficials, including alleged abuse of power in issuing permits and paying bribes to central and local government officials.

Riau Police spokesman Zulkili said he had not yet heard about the allegations and declined to

comment.The head of the ma-

fia eradication task force, Denny Indraya-na, said it planned to re-open the illegal log-ging case.

“We will see wheth-er there was indica-tions of a judicial ma-fia,” he said.

Denny said many il-legal logging cases, in other provinces as well as Riau, had been dropped under suspi-cious circumstances.

“Vast areas of our forests have been destroyed,” he said. “We need to send a clear message, a message that will make people involved in illegal logging think twice.”

Denny said the task force would comply with an order is-sued last week by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to investi-gate the country’s notoriously corrupt forestry sector.

“We will follow up the presi-dent’s directives,” he said. “The mafia task force has accepted, and will always accept, input from any party regarding illegal logging and indications of mafia involvement.”

Denny said the mafia eradica-tion task force would work with the Forestry Ministry to investi-gate the illegal logging claims.

Forestry Minister Zulkif li Hasan recently said that up to 3.5 million hectares of land was cleared each year between 1997 and 2002.

The current rate of deforesta-tion is about 700,000 hectares a year, mostly in Papua.

Of the 131 million hectares of forests across the country, only about a third is estimated to be original old-growth forest.

Additional reporting by Budi Otmansyah

Officials Accused of Ending Probe in Riau Logging Case To mark Earth Day on Thursday,

activists in Jakarta urged the government to start taking saving the environment seriously, while those in Bali declared it Coral Day.

“Indonesia has too much to carry on its shoulders now, economic and social burdens, ecological burdens, disasters everywhere, too much debt and lots of environmental issues,” Teguh Surya, head of advocacy at the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi), said on a talk show dedicated to Earth Day.

“With the Earth Day momentum, it’s more than appropriate to mark it by seeing how far we have damaged our ecology.”

On climate change, Teguh said the government had been focusing on preventing more damage caused by global warming but ignored the need for local people to survive and adapt to global warming.

“Most areas prone to climate change are coastal areas and small islands, but our government’s policies have been focusing only on the forestry sector,” Teguh said.

Nadia Hadad, project coordinator at the Bank Information Center, said all climate change funding had focused on mitigation efforts.

“As a developing country, Indonesia needs to adapt, but this issue has never fully been

taken into consideration by developed countries because it has no close connection or effect on them,” Nadia said.

Zenzi Suhadi, executive director of the Walhi branch in Bengkulu, said people there did not need more money and wanted the government to stop investment.

“These people are very frustrated now seeing how mining and palm oil plantations have stolen their income and livelihood. They just want it stopped,” said Zenzi.

The province once relied on fisheries but now mining and

plantations have taken over, meaning people had not choice but to encroach on forests or even send children out to sea to catch fish.

Meanwhile, on Serangan Island off Bali, locals celebrated Earth Day by inaugurating Coral Day, which was envisioned by green groups including Telapak and Kehati (the Indonesian Biodiversity Foundation).

“We hope this movement raises people’s awareness of the importance of coral, especially in tackling climate change,” Telapak activist Ery Damayanti said.

The observance includes a

coral adoption program, where tourists can pay an individual or institution to plant coral on their behalf and get a certificate and regular reports on its progress. The donations would range from Rp 180,000 to Rp 5 million ($20 to ($555).

“The money will be used for coral treatment, seed supplies and other things,” Ery said.

Serangan Island had been chosen because of its strategic place to show the world that Indonesia was taking aggressive action to save corals. Fidelis E Satriastanti & Made Arya Kencana

Earth Day a Time of Reckoning for Green Activists

Pipes carrying steam at the Darajat Unit III geothermal plant operated by the local unit of US energy giant Chevron in Garut, West Java. Photo Courtesy of Chevron

‘When there’s a blackout, we really feel it because we can’t produce at work’Tati, Sinarsari resident

We need to send a clear message, a message that will make illegal loggers think twice

Denny Indrayana, Judicial Mafia

Eradication Task Force

Walhi activists have the weight of the world on their shoulders in Yogyakarta. JG Photo/Boy T Harjanto

‘The application process is difficult and you need to bribe people to get a job there’Amat, farmer