A combined niche transition and energy justice study of biomass gasification in Indonesia

Abstract

Problem Statement
Indonesia is the world’s largest archipelago nation, with 270 million people inhabiting 6,000 islands that span almost 2000 square kilometers (World Population Review, 2020). With 80% of its industries and 60% of its population located in coastal regions, Indonesia is particularly vulnerable to rising sea- levels and extreme weather events (Fünfgeld, 2020). Despite the urgent need to transition towards low carbon energy production, the development of renewables in Indonesia is very slow. In 2019, 84% of electricity was generated from fossil fuels, 59% of which came from coal power plants (IEA, 2020b). Considering the prevailing poverty levels, which stood at 24% in 2018 ($ 3.20/day poverty line), Indonesia is faced with the dual challenge of human development and climate change. Biomass gasification is a particularly interesting option for Indonesia due to the enormous quantities of residues produced from the agriculture and forestry sectors. Activities commenced in the late 1970’s, however, despite over forty years of development the technology has not reached wide-scale diffusion and very few clear examples of commercially viable projects exist. Further investigation is needed to understand how biomass gasification can contribute to energy justice in Indonesia, and which factors have influenced its development over the past forty years.

Research Goals and Research Design
Theory from sustainability transitions research and energy justice are used to develop a framework that facilitates the investigation of: (1) the factors that have influenced the development of the biomass gasification niche, and (2) how niche projects and the electricity sector have performed with respect to energy justice. An integrated Multi-Level Perspective (MLP) and Strategic Niche Management (SNM) frame- work is combined with the energy justice framework of Sovacool, M. Burke, et al., 2017. Explanatory and descriptive research is complemented by exploratory research, that utilises semi-structured expert interviews to gain deeper insights into transition dynamics and energy justice.

Main Findings
The biomass gasification niche has largely relied on international donors to support activities. In 1980 the main landscape pressure motivating donors was energy (in)security during the world oil crises. Many years later, international and domestic interest in biomass gasification increased largely in response to the intensifying landscape pressure to mitigate climate change. Projects have been implemented in rural locations where there is a need to: alleviate poverty, increase electricity access, and reduce diesel fuel consumption. The latter is due to the increasing burden of oil subsidies and rapidly declining domestic oil reserves.

Since 2012 a number of formal rules have been introduced in order to incentivise biomass gasification projects - these started with fixed Feed-in-Tariffs, and later linked the electricity price to the local generation cost of the electricity utility, PLN. Both regulations failed to incentivise commercial projects, while the latter was widely regarded as inhibitory to niche development as PLN’s generation cost is heavily influenced by fossil fuel subsidies (Interviewee 5 - International Project Facilitator, 2020; Interviewee 8 - Government, 2020). The increased use of biomass for cofiring with coal has led to the formation of a domestic market for waste biomass - these feedstocks have since been prohibitively expensive for niche projects.

As the niche network has expanded beyond technical research institutions, the learning processes progressed to learning about policy and regulation, biomass potential, societal and environmental impact, and business models. Knowledge of biomass potential has greatly improved - while the domestic mar- ket for biomass waste has made agribusiness waste prohibitively expensive, the Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) has started to investigate the potential of different biomass species for cultivation on degraded land - creating a key opportunity for niche projects to align with the land-use dimension of climate change mitigation. Finally, in CPI’s recent projects, actors have been able to learn more about the societal and environmental impact of biomass gasification - a key source of competitive advantage over other renewable energy niches (discussed below).

However, the success of niche projects to date have been hampered by a variety of socio-technical challenges, several of which still remain - feedstock security, operator training, and business models to facilitate niche expansion. In terms of the actor network, there has been minimal interaction between the different actor groups over the last forty years - this lack of shared learning has meant that actors have not been able to effectively learn from the accumulating experiences of other niche projects, and so resulted in limited examples of reinforcing niche nurturing processes and second-order learning.

Since the earliest niche experiments in 1980, biomass gasification projects have attempted to alleviate some of the injustices caused by Indonesia’s electricity regime. By targeting rural communities that have been marginalised by poor access to energy services, projects have sought to alleviate the intra- generational inequity in the availability of electricity. Through careful project design, actors were able to contribute to improved transparency and accountability and alleviate some injustices that intersect with energy justice. Regarding the latter, the main contribution has been in the targeting of low-income rural communities with limited access to electricity (socio-economic justice), although CPI’s Mentawai project also contributed to improved gender justice.

Recommendations
The key recommendations from this research are: (1) align projects with multiple landscape pressures - choose locations in which these pressures are more intense by comparing biomass potential (agro- industry locations or degraded land for crop cultivation), to the locations of diesel power plants (and regions in which the local generation cost is high), and locations of communities with poor electricity access and limited economic development; (2) accelerate niche development by improving cross-project communication; (3) implement long-term strategy to improve technical knowledge in rural areas so that communities are able to successfully operate and maintain biomass gasification plants, and (4) the Government should adopt an energy justice framework, such as that proposed by Sovacool, M. Burke, et al., 2017, that not only considers distributional justice, but also due process, recognition, restorative, and cosmopolitan justice - this will result in supportive policies that more accurately value the positive energy justice contribution of niche technologies like biomass gasification, and thereby facilitate the large-scale diffusion of these technologies.

Further work
This historical case study can be used as the basis for a participatory future-oriented research project that investigates how the biomass gasification niche can be scaled-up in a just manner - designing a number of scenarios over the short-, medium-, and long-term. Considering the broad scope of Indonesia’s electricity sector, a more comprehensive energy justice analysis is necessary for niche innovations and traditional technologies in order to facilitate fair energy decision-making.

This research has combined an integrated MLP and SNM framework with an energy justice framework. Sovacool’s broad energy justice framework creates a number of opportunities for integrating this analysis into the MLP and SNM frameworks. Academically relevant further research should focus on the integration of energy justice and Sustainability Transitions Research frameworks.