The Indonesian government has been urged to pay serious attention to the use of renewable energy, especially in rural villages, as it can help drive the economy by creating job opportunities and generating income that, in turn, can reduce poverty, a scholar has said.
Speaking in Yogyakarta on Tuesday, Jakarta-based Darma Persada University’s (UNSADA) graduate school/renewable energy director, Kamaruddin Abdullah, said the government already possessed several regulations to push the use of renewable energy.
“In practice, however, the government has yet to allocate sufficient funds to put renewable energy into practice,” Kamaruddin said after speaking in a discussion on renewable energy, which was jointly organized by UNSADA, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and Support for Economic Analysis Development in Indonesia (SEADI).
Currently, according to Kamaruddin, only 67 percent of Indonesia’s total regions had access to electricity. The remainder, especially villages, has no such access depite the fact that they are rich in renewable energy sources such as firewood and biomass.
Click here to read the full story.
