Despite efforts to ease policies, geothermal leader Indonesia only uses up 2GW of its 29GW potential capacity.
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| Yuichiro Yoi, principal investment specialist at Asian Development Bank (ADB) |
Indonesia has been slowly but surely ramping up its geothermal power generation capabilities, especially in 2018. “With the third and final unit of the ADB-financed Sarulla geothermal power project, with a capacity of 320 MW, coming online, Indonesia now has the world’s second largest installed geothermal power generation capacity after the US,” Yuichiro Yoi, principal investment specialist at Asian Development Bank (ADB)’s private sector operations department, told Asian Power.
As well, Yoi observed that one potentially interesting area is the development and proliferation of geothermal exploration insurance products to de-bottle-neck exploration efforts. “There seems to have been a few cases where such insurance was provided by insurance companies. If they can build a critical mass of portfolio to create diversification effects, and thereby bring down the still-very-expensive insurance premium, that could potentially boost the geothermal sector,” he said.
