Low Carbon News in Indonesia in August 2014
With work still to be done, new govt should continue REDD+ plan
The Jakarta Post | National | Mon, August 04 2014, 9:47 AM
The Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation plus (REDD+) Management Agency is urging the incoming government to remain committed to ongoing efforts to reduce carbon emissions. The Jakarta Post interviewed REDD+ Management Agency chairman Heru Prasetyo. Here is an excerpt.
Question: How does the agency plan to reduce carbon emissions in Indonesia?
Answer: At the 2009 G20 Summit, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono announced that Indonesia, working in its own interests, would be willing to reduce carbon emissions by 26 percent by 2020. But then he promised a 41 percent reduction if the world cooperated.
We found there was a need for institutional development and increased coordination, regulations needed to be updated, we also needed a better map to report to the world, we then needed to make changes in the legal system and law enforcement. Finally, we decided to use a multi-stakeholder approach to promote discussion.
These five strategies were translated into the REDD+ Management Agency, which began operating in 2014.
What must the new government do that the current one hasn’t already done?
There’s a lot of unfinished work, such as the indigenous groups’ rights bill that the House of Representatives should ratify. Then there are a few judiciary issues, such as conducting [forest] concession reviews across the board.
We use a jurisdictional approach, in which we support governors or regents to complete the circle with the central government, allowing them to conduct license audits and other initiatives.
Our demand for the new government is to continue what has already been started. Arrange activities and so-called “bureaucratic reform”.
If working units from the Forestry Ministry measure carbon emissions, then the ministry’s business practices need to be improved for transparency’s sake.
From a judicial perspective, […] one unresolved problem is the capacity of law enforcers to understand crimes committed further up the chain of command, like those commissioning illegal logging practices.
Corporate crimes should be addressed. We can use a multi-door approach to charge perpetrators for multiple offences. (tjs)
Gunungkidul Farmers Participate in Carbon Stocks Measuring
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta Monday, 04 August, 2014 | 06:42 WIB
Suratimin, the founder of Semoyo Pembaharu Farmers Alliance in Gunungkidul has acquired the skill to estimate carbon stocks in the forest managed by the people. Suratimin learnt the skill after his one-year involvemnet in the carbon stocks estimation and monitoring done by the Alliance of Volunteer for Nature Rescue (Arupa) in 2010. “We estimated again the carbon stocks in 2012,” said Suratimin who estimates the carbon stocks in Semoyo people’s forest.
According to Suratimin, a simple way to estimate the carbon stock is by determining sample trees in each hamlet. To calculate the stocks, Suratimin uses the method of allometric equations that is developed by Ris Hadi, a lecturer in the Forestry Faculty of Gadjah mada University. The allometric method was firstly introduced by Kitteredge in 1944.
The farmer community who plant Teak, Sengon, Mahogany or Jasema trees in Terong Village, Bantul, is also learning to account their carbon stocks.
As the result, the potential of carbon stocks in people’s forest in 2011 is 31.45 tons per hectare in the yards and 137.45 tons per hectare in the moor. In 2013 the number has changed to 66.20 per hectare in the yard and 44.76 tons per hectare. People can sell their carbon stocks for 5 to 10 dollars per ton.
EU ratification helps push timber exports in first semester
Suherdjoko, The Jakarta Post, Jepara, Central Java | Business | Fri, August 15 2014, 10:25 AM
The ratification of an international agreement to curb illegal timber trade early this year has contributed to an increase in exports of Indonesia’s forestry products. According to data issued by the Forestry Ministry, exports of forest products rose 11.8 percent in the first half of this year to US$3.8 billion from $3.4 billion in the same period last year.
Forestry Minister Zulkifli Hasan said the ratification of the agreement by the European Union (EU) in March helped spur exports of Indonesia’s forestry products to the EU countries in recent months. Zulkifli said Indonesia, one of the world’s biggest timber producers, was the first country to have such an agreement ratified by the European Parliament.
With the acknowledgement, Indonesian timber will get a license that exempts Indonesian forest products from mandatory audit, which takes more time and money. The certification will in the end cut verification time significantly, allowing the quick release of Indonesian timber arriving at European import gateways.
Zulkifli said further that the government, alongside donors, had donated a total of Rp 58.2 billion ($4.98 million) this year, up 24.09 percent from Rp 46.9 billion in the previous year, to raise public awareness on the SVLK implementation. From the 2014 figure, the government and donors — namely, the Multistakeholder Forestry Programme (MFP), the Nature Conservancy (TNC), the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the Indonesian Ecolabeling Institute (LEI) and the Kemitraan — donated Rp 6.2 billion and Rp 52 billion respectively.
Time to Recognize Community Forest Rights to Combat Climate Change
The Jakarta Globe On 10:56 am Aug 28, 2014
A new report by the World Resources Institute (WRI) and Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), “Securing Rights, Combating Climate Change: How Strengthening Community Forest Rights Mitigates Climate Change,” finds overwhelming evidence that strengthening community forest rights can reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from deforestation and improve forest health.
Communities in countries where governments actively undermine their forest rights succumb to deforestation pressures. Some Peruvian indigenous community forests suffer the worst deforestation in the Amazon, losing up to 51 percent of their forests — mostly to oil and gas concessions, which cover 75 percent of the Peruvian Amazon. (In part of Peru’s Madre de Dios, fully 87 percent of indigenous community forests are covered with mining, oil, and gas concessions and other conflicting land uses.
Similarly, in Ecuador, indigenous lands outside government protected areas lost 6.5 percent of their forests between 2000 and 2008, partly to oil and mining concessions on indigenous lands. The concessions also brought roads and settlers.
Outside of Latin America, in Papua New Guinea, almost all forests are legally owned by communities (97 percent), but this is largely a paper right because the government routinely allocates indigenous community forests for use as palm oil plantations. The government has issued leases to private companies covering about 4 million hectares — an area the size of Switzerland. If logged and converted for palm oil production as planned, the deforestation would release almost 3 billion tons of CO2.
To address community forest rights as not just a forest or land problem but a climate change problem, governments, civil society and other stakeholders can:
— Legally recognize the forest rights of indigenous peoples and local communities;
— Protect the legal forest rights of indigenous peoples and local communities by, for example, mapping community forest boundaries and expelling illegal loggers;
— Support forest communities with technical assistance and training;
— Engage forest communities in decision-making on investments that affect their forests; and
— Compensate indigenous peoples and local communities for the climate benefits provided by their sustainable forest management.
RI steps up audits of oil palm companies
The Jakarta Post, Agencies, Jakarta | Business | Thu, August 28 2014, 8:59 AM
Indonesia’s latest tactic for slowing the world’s fastest rate of deforestation is to crack down on the licensing of companies that have concessions for agriculture on peatlands and rain forests.
The agency for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) is auditing 18 companies to check for proper licensing, Heru Prasetyo, head of the REDD+ office in Jakarta, said in an interview with Bloomberg. The country’s laws and the way they are enforced need to be changed, said Prasetyo.
“After we review the licenses, we register them and we start doing the dirty things like revoking the licenses,” Prasetyo said on Aug. 18. “Three companies are being prosecuted,” he added, declining to identify them.
A lack of central government oversight and corruption in licensing, traditionally done at the local level, contributed to the illegal burning of Indonesia’s peatlands and forests. The Environment Ministry is separately investigating 29 cases this year against 26 companies accused of using fires to clear land in Riau, a national center for oil palm, pulp and paper production, it said on Aug. 6. Only seven criminal cases involving forest fires were filed in 2013.
The audits come after Singapore passed a bill last month on trans-boundary haze to fine companies proven to engage, authorize or condone acts that contribute to haze. The city-state endured its worst-ever air quality last year.
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/08/28/ri-steps-audits-oil-palm-companies.html
Legal certification for imported timber to be applied soon
Linda Yulisman, The Jakarta Post | Business | Sat, August 30 2014, 11:04 AM
Indonesia has moved ahead with its plan to require imported timber and timber products to comply with the local legality-certification scheme and expects the new policy to be implemented as soon as early next year. The Trade Ministry’s director general for foreign trade, Partogi Pangaribuan, said his office was finalizing the regulation and would issue it in September.
The rule would provide a three-month transition period to allow importers to adjust to the new arrangements, he said, adding that the certification scheme could be fully implemented by early next year. “We want to ensure that timber products entering our country are legally sourced, as ours are. This can be traced through the legality certification,” Partogi told reporters on Friday.
Three new power plants to operate this year
Khoirul Amin, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Business | Tue, August 12 2014, 11:49 AM
Indonesia is showing its commitment to developing renewable energy by continuing several geothermal power plant projects across the country with a total capacity of 1,000 megawatts (MW). State-Owned Enterprises Minister Dahlan Iskan said on Monday that the development of nine power plant projects by state oil company Pertamina were now at various stages of development.
Dahlan made the statement after a closed-door meeting with directors of Pertamina and state-owned electricity firm PT PLN. “This shows very good progress because a number of the projects had been delayed for a long time due to various problems,” he said, adding that Pertamina and PLN were in discussions over the ceiling price for electricity generated from the geothermal power plants.
The nine geothermal power plant projects are Kamojang Unit 1 and Karaha Bodas in West Java, Ulubelu units 3 and 4 in Lampung, Lahendong units 5 and 6 and Kota Mobago in North Sulawesi, Lumutbalai units 1 and 2 and Lumutbalai units 3 and 4 in South Sumatra, Hulu Lais units 1 and 2 in Bengkulu and Sungai Penuh in Jambi. The projects, carried out by PT Pertamina Geothermal Energy (PGE), a subsidiary of PT Pertamina, are estimated to cost US$2.29 billion.
As part of its new energy policy, the government is targeting up to 9,500 MW in electricity produced from geothermal power plants by 2025. The new energy policy sets a number of targets for the country’s supply and use of energy until 2050.
The development of renewable energy sources, such as geothermal, solar, water, wind and biomass, will become the government’s priority in the future as, according to the new policy, the use of renewable energy will be increased from 6 percent at present to at least 23 percent by 2025 and at least 31 percent by 2050. Meanwhile, the use of fossil fuels, which at present account for 49 percent of the total energy mix, will be reduced to less than 25 percent in 2025, and less than 20 percent in 2050. The use of natural gas will be increased from 20 percent to at least 22 percent in 2025 and 24 percent in 2050.
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/08/12/three-new-power-plants-operate-year.html
Java, Bali to face power crisis soon
Raras Cahyafitri, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Headlines | Thu, August 14 2014, 9:44 AM
Java and Bali, the country’s economic hubs, are heading for an electricity crisis earlier than many had predicted as delays in the operation of several key power plants are expected to curb supply amid soaring demand by industry. State power company PT PLN warned on Wednesday that the decline in the electricity reserve margin in the Java-Bali area would reach an alarming level in 2016, earlier than a previous forecast of beyond 2018.
PLN director for construction Nasri Sebayang said the reserve margin was currently hovering at 27 percent, already lower than the ideal level of 30 percent. “The margin will continue to drop significantly as there is no significant supply from new power plants while demand keeps on rising at a rapid pace,” Nasri said. According to the company’s projections, the margin in Java-Bali will plunge to 18 percent in 2015 and to 16 percent in 2016 and 2017.
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/08/14/java-bali-face-power-crisis-soon.html
New administration to inherit low oil output, slow biodiesel blend
Raras Cahyafitri, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Business | Sat, August 16 2014, 12:02 PM
The upcoming administration of president-elect Joko “Jokowi” Widodo will face a tough challenge in the energy sector mainly due to declining oil production and a high level of fuel imports resulting from poor implementation of the mandatory biodiesel blend. The new president, who will be sworn in on Oct. 20, will see oil production of only 845,000 barrels of oil per day (bopd) next year as stipulated in the state budget.
The outgoing administration under President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has been struggling to boost exploration to find hydrocarbons to secure reserves. However, the move has been hampered by a number of issues, particularly the arduous procedure required for companies to obtain permission in order to conduct exploration activities.
The declining oil production has forced the government to import a huge volume of oil and its products to meet growing domestic demand.
As part of attempts to slow down growing demand, the government has implemented a mandatory 10 percent crude palm oil (CPO)-based biofuel blend into diesel. The attempt is ongoing, although realization has been lower than expected.
Under the plan, almost 4 million kiloliters of CPO-based biofuel is targeted to be mixed with diesel this year. However, the realization is currently only 54 percent of the target, the renewable energy director general at the Energy and Mineral Resources, Rida Mulyana, said on Friday. “We weren’t prepared for the implementation of the mandatory biodiesel blend to be so difficult, particularly with the lack of facilities, such as blending facilities. Realization of the target now depends on whether Pertamina and PLN is successful with their biodiesel procurement tenders,” Rida said.
Energy board raises alarm, demands breakthrough
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Business | Wed, August 20 2014, 11:32 AM
Indonesia’s National Energy Council (DEN) has warned the next administration that doing “business as usual” could trigger an “energy emergency” in the country and has provided policy recommendations primarily aimed at reducing the burdensome fuel subsidy and creating breakthroughs, especially in renewable energy.
Some 1.5 million barrels of fuel are consumed in the country each day, with domestic production meeting just half of the demand, or some 788,000 barrels per day (bpd). This means that Rp 874 billion (US$74.8 million) must be spent by the government each day on fuel imports make up the difference, according to DEN member Syamsir Abduh.
Advancements in renewable energies also needed to be accelerated, at least during the first year the new administration steps into office, Rinaldy added. “The new government should optimize DEN as a tool to support the renewable energy programs, because we already stated in our National Energy Policy Design (KEN) that renewable energy should account for at least 23 percent of total energy consumption in 2025,” he said.
Rinaldy cited Brazil’s decision to set aside 8 million hectares of land for the production of sugarcane to be processed into ethanol, a new kind of biofuel, as an example of the kinds of initiatives Indonesia needed. He said this move had also bolstered domestic supplies of sugar. Several other plants, such as cassava, buckwheat and the country’s abundant supply of palm oil could also be utilized to produce biofuels.
Indonesia, however, is still reliant on oil to meet 44 percent of its energy needs, with gas accounting for 23 percent, coal for 27 percent and renewable energy for 6 percent. It is estimated that reserves for oil, gas and coal will run out in 10 years, 30 years and 80 years, respectively.
Hence, the DEN energy blueprint recommends an energy mix in 2025 of 30 percent coal, 25 percent oil, 22 percent gas and 23 percent renewable energy. In 2050, the council recommends an energy mix of 26 percent coal, 20 percent oil, 24 percent gas and 30 percent renewable energy.
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/08/20/energy-board-raises-alarm-demands-breakthrough.html
Legal barrier to geothermal development removed
Raras Cahyafitri, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Headlines | Wed, August 27 2014, 9:20 AM
The House of Representatives passed on Tuesday the new Geothermal Law, eliminating the legal barrier for the development of Indonesia’s geothermal resources, which are among the largest in the world.
Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Jero Wacik said the new law heralded a breakthrough in the development of geothermal resources in the country because activities relating to geothermal development were no longer considered mining activities, such as the exploration and production of oil, gas, minerals and coal.
With this change, the development of geothermal fields located in forest conservation areas were no longer prohibited, the minister added. Under the Forestry Law, conducting mining activities in forest conservation areas is prohibited, causing delays in many geothermal projects that are mostly located in protected forests. “We have huge potential but development has remained low due to environmental concerns. This has now been changed and we hope it will create a new era in geothermal development,” Jero told legislators in a speech during a House plenary session.
Indonesia is rich in geothermal resources, which estimates suggest could produce 29 gigawatts of electricity. However, current utilization is no more than 5 percent of the potential as only 1,341 megawatts (MW) of electricity are produced from existing geothermal plants.
Highlights of the new law
* Geothermal activities are no longer considered mining activities so that development of geothermal resources can be carried out in forest conservation areas. Under the Forestry Law, mining operations are prohibited in protected forests.
* Tenders for geothermal projects are called by the central government instead of by local administrations under the current regulations.
* New geothermal projects should be developed under new pricing rules.
* Local administrations will receive a portion of the revenues derived from geothermal resources under the so-called production bonus scheme.
* Government regulations mandated by the law must be issued within two years after the law passes.
* Regarding the direct utilization of geothermal potential and pricing, early surveys, exploration and the procedure of assignments, tendering procedures, requirements, documents and implementation, the size of working areas, procedures for determining prices, procedures of administrative sanctions, obligations of the holders of geothermal licenses, the amount and procedures of production bonuses, the management and utilization of geothermal data and information and supervision
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/08/27/legal-barrier-geothermal-development-removed.html
Garuda to use biofuel in 2016 to reduce emissions
Nadya Natahadibrata, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Business | Wed, August 27 2014, 10:30 AM
National flag carrier PT Garuda Indonesia is planning to mix avtur (aviation turbine fuel) with biofuel starting in 2016, to help reduce its carbon emissions. Garuda Indonesia operational director Capt. Novianto Herupratomo said on Tuesday the airline had taken several measures to protect the environment, including by preparing to switch from fossil fuel to clean energy.
However, the state-owned carrier’s commitment to supporting the use of clean energy will be highly dependent on the availability of the crude palm oil (CPO)-based biofuel that is currently being tested at state-owned oil and gas company PT Pertamina’s laboratory. “We hope that the biofuel can be produced on a large scale so the price will be relatively the same as avtur. Hopefully [biofuel can be] cheaper than avtur,” Novianto told reporters.
All aircraft operated by Garuda were already equipped with the ability to use biofuel, and the carrier would soon prepare aircraft for a trial, he added.
Garuda needs about 1.8 billion liters of avtur per year to operate a variety of aircraft that it owns. In 2016, Garuda’s jet fuel consumption is expected to reach 2 billion liters per year.
In December last year, Transportation Minister EE Mangindaan signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Jero Wacik on renewable energy in the aviation sector. Under the MoU, the government targeted reducing the use of fossil fuel in the aviation sector by mixing avtur with 2 percent biofuel in 2016 and planned to increase the amount to 3 percent in 2020.
Following the MoU, a working team that consists of 14 institutions — including the government, the aviation industry, fuel producers and researchers — was formed to begin biofuel production, and the Agriculture Ministry was tasked with providing the plantations to supply the CPO.
As evidence of the government’s commitment to realize the 2 percent biofuel target, the government held a workshop attended by all stakeholders on Tuesday to realize the initiative, said Transportation Ministry director general for air transportation Santoso Eddy Wibowo. “The program to mitigate emissions in the country’s air transportation sector is in line with global plans to increase energy efficiency, both through technology improvements and operational efficiency,” Eddy said.
The number of aircraft operating in the country grew from 962 aircraft in 2008 to 1,319 aircraft by the end of 2012, while passenger numbers rose from 41.5 million in 2008 to 77.2 million last year, ministry data shows. The ministry had also encouraged shipping lines to start converting to liquefied natural gas (LNG) from oil, according to Bobby Mamahit, director general for sea transportation.
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/08/27/garuda-use-biofuel-2016-reduce-emissions.html
Rural youth and climate change
Caroline Zastiral and John B. Trew, Bangkok | Opinion | Thu, August 07 2014, 10:15 AM
Alongside the tragic loss of life and widespread destruction that Typhoon Haiyan wreaked upon the Philippines late last year, it also, quite literally, ripped one of the region’s economic mainstays right out of the ground. In the province of Eastern Samar, the coconut groves that local workers depend on for wages and daily labor were flattened, eliminating one of the main sources of income for workers in the area.
In the blink of an eye, the already fragile economy of a poor rural area was devastated. The coconut groves were part of a monoculture approach to agriculture that is common throughout Southeast Asia, and with the coconut groves gone, the fragility of the local economy was made all too apparent.
The result? Many young people were forced to migrate to cities to seek work, emptying communities already devastated by the superstorm. Others have been forced to turn to illegal, small scale mining, meaning that not only is unregulated, polluting resource extraction on the rise, but local water supplies are damaged. Often, we also see an increase in child labor as a result of these shocks to families’ livelihoods.
Such is the vicious, destructive cycle of environmental devastation, climate change, and limited economic opportunities for young people in much of Southeast Asia.
The storm shed light on what we already knew: in areas with limited job opportunities, combined with minimal understanding about conservation and environmental sustainability, the vulnerability of the people who live there, and the environment around them, increases even further.
With severe weather in Southeast Asia increasing as a result of climate change, the international children’s development organization Plan International is releasing a report titled “Green Skills for Rural Youth in Southeast Asia”.
The report examines solutions to reduce destructive environmental job practices while also encouraging the development of new skills that can contribute to both economic development and environmental conservation in Indonesia, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam.
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/08/07/rural-youth-and-climate-change.html
Dirty Work Does Lots of Good in East Java
The Jakarta Globe on 02:05 pm Aug 10, 2014
The small path that divides a vast stretch of sugarcane plantation in the village of Sepanjang, Malang district, East Java, is strewn with discarded paper and colorful plastic food wrappers, running for about 10 meters before ending at a mountain of trash piling three meters high.
Iskandar has been operating a private waste management operation for the past seven years. His scheme is to rent out spaces from plantation owners, usually the size of a football pitch at a price of Rp 500,000 ($43) a month that he uses as a landfill. He is careful to fill it only non-toxic biodegradable waste so by the time the landfill is full, he can returned it to the owner who benefited by having a soil filled with decomposed trash which acts as fertilizers.
“The owner likes having piles of garbage. He says it can fertilize his sugarcanes, like those ones over there,” Iskandar says pointing to his old landfill which is now overrun with sugarcanes and another which now hosts a healthy crop of corn.
In turn Iskandar charges Rp 10,000 a month to each of his 350 clients to transport their trash, making a profit of Rp 5 million a month, just enough to pay his assistant, his truck’s installment and other operational expenses. His bonus is finding stuff he can sell for scrap or fix. But Iskandar is not doing it for the money.
And the problem is not unique to Gondanglegi. Malang district spatial planning and public works agency chief Romdhoni says the district of Malang have four main landfills hosting a total of 400 tons of waste each day. But “that is only 54 percent of the total waste produced by the district. The rest are traditionally buried at their respective properties … thrown into the river or public area,” he says.
People in Gondanglegi have little choice but to leave trash in the open, burn it or throw it into an open sewer or nearby river until Iskandar, who hails from the same neighborhood, decided to act.
http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/features/dirty-work-lots-good-east-java/
Government urged to tackle urbanization challenges
Nadya Natahadibrata, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Business | Wed, August 13 2014, 11:17 AM
With the country’s number of urban inhabitants tripling over the last four decades, the Indonesian Association of Planners (IAP) has urged the central government and city administrations to anticipate future surges in urbanization as the country’s economy and productive-age population continue to grow.
IAP chairman Bernardus Djonoputro said the number of people living in urban areas was estimated to continue to grow over the next few years as such areas are deemed as providing better employment and education opportunities, as well as technological innovation. “More than 30 mid-sized cities in Indonesia will eventually accommodate populations of more than 1 million each. And these cities are now facing the risk of being unable to fulfill the needs of their residents,” Bernardus said during the 24th Eastern Regional Organization for Planning and Housing (EAROPH) World Congress on Monday.
During the EAROPH event, the IAP launched the 2014 Most Livable City Index, which named Balikpapan, Surakarta, Malang, Yogyakarta, Palembang, Makassar and Bandung as the country’s most livable cities.
The survey, which was conducted in 17 cities across the archipelago, showed that 63.6 percent of respondents overall were satisfied with the quality of life in their cities. Balikpapan, the business capital of East Kalimantan, rated the highest, as 71.12 percent of its residents considered the city comfortable.
Among the indicators to measure the cities’ livability were transportation systems, accessibility, environmental quality and socioeconomic conditions. The quality of spatial planning, the number of green spaces, the environmental pollution level, and the protection of historical buildings were also among the indicators, according to the IAP. The availability of green spaces is one aspect that helps to improve the quality of life of city dwellers, according to Deputy Public Works Minister Hermanto Dardak.
“Cities that topped the list, including Balikpapan and Yogyakarta, have almost reached the minimum green-space proportion of 30 percent [of the entire city area],” Hermanto said. “Therefore, the government has aimed to amend the current spatial planning law, which should detail regulations on green space and city zoning systems,” he added.
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/08/13/government-urged-tackle-urbanization-challenges.html
City administration to build green high-rise offices
Sita W. Dewi, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Jakarta | Fri, August 15 2014, 10:08 AM
The city administration has planned to build green high-rise office buildings and merge its agencies to provide land for green spaces. Governor Joko “Jokowi” Widodo said the city planned to demolish all low-rise office buildings and relocate the agencies to new high-rise buildings.
“In the future we will build high-rise and green buildings and relocate agencies to the new buildings. The old low-rise buildings will be demolished to provide land to build public parks and green spaces,” Jokowi told reporters during an inspection of a nearly-finished 16-story office tower in Jatibaru, Central Jakarta on Thursday.
The new office tower, expected to be ready by the end of this year, will accommodate three agencies, namely the Construction Supervision and Regulation Agency (PPB), the Public Works Agency and the Transportation Agency, whose current offices are located in the same compound, which occupies 3.5 hectares of land, along with three other agencies: the Energy and Industry Agency, the National Land Agency Jakarta chapter and the Jakarta Housing and Administrative Buildings Agency.
The city administration under Jokowi aimed to boost the amount of open green space in the capital to 30 percent of its total land area, as mandated by the national law. Jakarta has not yet been able to meet the requirement because of rampant squatting, as well as the previous administrations’ preference to convert land into commercial areas instead of public parks.
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/08/15/city-administration-build-green-high-rise-offices.html
Exchanging Trashes for Rice
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta – Sunday, 17 August, 2014 | 10:04 WIB
Makassar City Administration has cooperated with 87 trash banks in the city in launching a program which allows people to exchange their garbage for rice. The types of trashes that can be exchanged for are copper, cartons/cardboard, and plastic bottles.
“We are trying to run the program with the help of the Trash Bank program that has been running for two years,” said Burhanudin, the Assitant III for Financial and Asset of Makassar City Administration during the launching on Wednesday.
The trash banks have previously run a program of exchanging organic trashes into money. Burhanudin now hoped that the people could exchange their non-organic trashes into rice or money. People who exchange the trashes will receive type of rice according to the market price.
“We see that people’s interaction with the trash banks is already good,” Burhanudin added.
According to local neighborhood representative (RW) 4 of Ballaparang, Petta Gilling, the mechanism of exchanging trash with rice is similar to that with money.
The amount of money received by the trash bank customers are depending on the type of the trash. For example, one kilogram of copper coil from the electronic transformer device is valued at Rp40,000. Carboard is worth for Rp600 per kilogram, plastic bottles for Rp1,000 to 1,200 per kilogram, and aluminum can for Rp7,000 per kilogram.
http://en.tempo.co/read/news/2014/08/17/206600198/Exchanging-Trashes-for-Rice
Property: ‘Incentives needed for businesses committed to ecological buildings’
The Jakarta Post | Supplement | Fri, August 29 2014, 9:43 AM
Hundreds of architects from around the world attended the Union Internationale des Architectes international conference in Durban, South Africa, on Aug. 8. Participants voiced their commitments to developing ecological buildings that efficiently use non-renewable natural resources through the sustainable use of energy. The Jakarta Post’s Sebastian Partogi talked with Marco Kusumawijaya, an architect and director of the Ruang Jakarta Center for Urban Studies, about the issue and its challenges in the context of Jakarta.
Question: What is the best indicator for determining whether a building is ecological or not?
Answer: Through its utilization of energy. To be ecological, a building needs to minimize its utilization of energy from unrenewable resources. Ideally, buildings need to be able to generate their own energy from solar, wind or biogas power. However, it will take some time before they can develop such technologies. Currently, most buildings still use energy from unrenewable resources like oil, coal and diesel to power electricity. That’s why they have to minimize their consumption of energy to prevent the resources from depleting.
What is the biggest challenge related to energy utilization in Jakarta’s office buildings?
While office buildings in countries with cold climates dedicate most of their energy utilization to creating room heater systems, those in tropical climates dedicate energy utilization to keeping rooms cool with air conditioning. Therefore, the utilization of energy for air conditioners should be our focus when it comes to a discussion of ecological buildings in the context of Jakarta. As long as a building uses air conditioners, it can’t be categorized as ecological because air conditioners use a lot of energy, constituting approximately 30 percent of a building’s total use of electricity.
But without air conditioning, won’t we feel uncomfortable because it will be too hot.
Actually, there are several alternative methods we can use to keep our buildings cool without using air conditioners. Just apply this principle of physics: to reduce heat, you need to reduce room humidity and increase air circulation using ventilation systems. You need to allow the wind to enter the building horizontally through windows and vertically through gaps in the roof. This will reduce heat significantly.
Furthermore, when you use air conditioning you have to completely seal your building to allow for efficient cooling. Unfortunately, while this method effectively prevents heat from outside from entering the building, it prevents the heat emitted by human bodies from getting outside the building and the heat will eventually accumulate and remain. So insulating buildings with thick glass is not a good solution to maintaining the temperature.
If you want to minimize the impact of outside heat to your building, its better build trees around your building. Trees can reduce heat from the sunlight by three to five degrees Celsius. So let’s say the temperature outside is 33 degrees, if you plant trees around your building, the temperature will be reduced to about 28 degrees, which is quite comfortable.
Unfortunately, these methods for maintaining temperatures cannot be applied to Jakarta’s office buildings, most of which are skyscrapers.
Why is it that these methods cannot be implemented in skyscrapers?
We need to go back to the principles of physics. The taller the building, the more difficult it is to control humidity, because the wind moves faster in higher altitudes. High altitudes also make proper circulation and ventilation difficult. Furthermore, tall buildings can’t be sheltered by trees, obviously. This is why our office buildings still depend on air conditioning. But again, we need to question whether tall buildings are really necessary for office space.
Why do you think tall buildings are unneccesary?
Actually, tall office buildings are built not because Jakarta has a lack of space for office buildings. If you really look at it, tall buildings are concentrated in only a few areas of Jakarta, most notably in the central business districts of Sudirman, Thamrin and Kuningan. It is the strategy of capitalism: by creating these small but highly exclusive areas and branding them as strategic, land prices will be much more expensive than in others.
Furthermore, an office building should contain a maximum of three to four stories. At that height, proper air ventilation and circulation is still possible. The buildings can also be sheltered by trees which will reduce the heat that comes from outside. Furthermore, tall buildings use an inefficient amount of energy to power their elevators and pump their waters.
Look at Barcelona; most office buildings there are an average of six stories high. But they use their space efficiently. So in order to achieve ecological buildings, we should not cluster our office buildings into exclusive central business districts, which forces us to build tall, inefficient buildings.
How can the development of ecological buildings still be made possible in Jakarta?
Currently, the cost of constructing ecological buildings is still expensive due to simple economics logic: because the buildings are not popular yet, there is limited demand, resulting in a small supply, leading to high prices. This is why the government needs to give incentives to businesses committed to ecological buildings; for example, by providing them with certain tax breaks for running their businesses in an environmentally sustainable way. Or, it can work the other way around, with the government imposing taxes on businesses that do not consider ecological concerns in running their operations. In the Netherlands the government imposes this kind of ecological tax, which operates in a similar way.
Aside from the tax incentives, what other benefits can businesspeople receive for developing and committing to using ecological buildings?
Their costs related to energy, most notably electricity, will be much lower in the long run. Furthermore, they can obviously use it as a method of branding, like “use my products because I run my business in a sustainable way.” In my own view, the global business is moving in that direction, so if we [Jakartans] don’t follow suit, we will soon be left behind.