Women Need to be Further Involved in Electricity Provision, Says Official in Indonesia-UK Low Carbon Energy Webinar

MINISTRY OF ENERGY AND MINERAL RESOURCES

REPUBLIC OF INDONESIA

PRESS RELEASE

NUMBER: 465.Pers/04/SJI/2021

Date: 17 December 2021

Women Need to be Further Involved in Electricity Provision, Says Official in Indonesia-UK Low Carbon Energy Webinar

Energy transition to net zero emission requires identification of energy resources, infrastructure and energy technology, to the allocation of appropriate financing. The most important thing is the availability of skilled and qualified human resources at every stage of an energy project, the Head of the Center for Human Resource Development on Electricity, New, Renewable Energy, and Energy Conservation of the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources, Laode Sulaeman, has said when opening a webinar titled "Gender and Inclusion for Sustainability: Beyond Reporting" on Wednesday (15/12). In fact, human resource development has been designated as a major national priority program, continued Laode.

Laode further said that gender mainstreaming is a strategy to integrate gender perspectives in development, from planning, budgeting, implementing, to monitoring and evaluating all program and development activities. This is emphasized in Presidential Instruction No. 9 of 2000 on gender mainstreaming in national development.

State ministries and government institutions, said Laode, are obliged to integrate the aspirations and challenges of women and men as well as marginalized groups in the planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of all policies and activities in various fields of life and development.

The Ministry of Women Empowerment and Child Protection together with the Institute for Essential Services Reform (IESR) in 2017 compiled two studies related to gender integration in the new, renewable energy sub-sector as well as gender integration guidelines to access special allocation funds for small-scale power plant development. The results of the study state that the gender and inclusion aspects of renewable energy at the program and policy level are complete, but their implementation has not been maximized. For this reason, it is important to bring gender and inclusion indicators down to an activity level. If this is not done, inequality and non-inclusion will still occur.

According to Laode, it is necessary to cooperate with local women's groups, organizations for people with disabilities, and other marginalized groups in the efforts to provide electricity access and develop renewables in rural areas.

"Women and marginalized groups need to be further involved in the use of energy for work and efforts to improve the economy, not only in domestic affairs. In addition, the role of women and marginalized groups in policymaking and the development of large-scale energy industries also need to be considered," continued Laode.

The role of women needs to be optimized to encourage the achievement of the 23% target of new and renewable energy by 2025 and the fulfillment of Indonesia's commitments by 2030. The Ministry of EMR has also ratified the 2021-2030 'Green' RUPTL (electricity procurement plan). In this RUPTL, 20.9 Giga Watt or 51.6% of total generation capacity will come from new and renewable energy power plants. Until 2030, the addition in new, renewable energy capacity will be dominated by hydro, solar, and geothermal power plants.

For the record, the webinar was held under the Mentari (Towards Indonesia's Low Carbon Energy Transition) program, a collaboration between the Ministry of EMR and the British Embassy Jakarta. The partnership started in February 2019 when the Ministry of EMR and the British Embassy Jakarta signed a Memorandum of Understanding on low carbon energy development cooperation. Next, an implementation agreement was signed in May 2020, and finally in July 2020 the 'Mentari' program was launched. (IY)

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