Use Of Bioethanol As BBN Needs Government Seriousness

Bio energy (Photo: Unsplash)

JAKARTA - The government is expected to seriously encourage and use bioethanol as a plant-based fuel (BBN) after being designated as one of the National Strategic Projects (PSN).

Executive Director of the Institute for Essential Services Reform (IESR), Fabby Tumiwa, emphasized that with the stipulation of bioethanol as a PSN, the government must be willing to intervene in the field of raw materials.

"It is necessary to be serious about the government. The main thing is that the government must intervene in the procurement of feedstock (raw materials)," he said, quoting Antara.

According to him, the government's seriousness is needed because there are three challenges that must be faced in the development of bioethanol as a source of vegetable energy.

The first challenge, he continued, is that there are very few sources of bioethanol raw materials in Indonesia compared to palm oil so that the development of B40 biodiesel is easier and faster, because it only remains to calculate how much for BBN and how much for export.

That's what distinguishes it from bioethanol. Ethanol is produced from plants as well as sugar cane, corn, sorghum or cassava. The problem is, the feedstock is not enough," he said.

He said that currently, sugar is still imported, while for the ethanol the molase is also not enough with the existing raw materials.

The second challenge, to produce ethanol with a fuelgrade standard is also not easy because what is needed is 99 percent ethanol and to produce ethanol fuelgrade still requires government intervention.

The third challenge is pricing, he added, the price of ethanol in the international market is most likely higher than the price of oil, because ethanol is also a raw material for industry and food.

Meanwhile, he added, in the development of bioethanol, there is no Palm Oil Plantation Fund Management Agency (BPDPKS) like in biodiesel. In biodiesel, if the FAME price is too expensive, for example, then subsidies can be collected from the agency, which is collected from palm oil entrepreneurs.

"That's why, so if you still want to develop bioethanol at affordable prices, the government must be prepared (using the state budget for subsidies)," said Fabby.

If Indonesia still wants to develop bioethanol, he added, the Government must intervene in these three challenges, especially in the procurement of small raw materials.

The same thing was conveyed by the Executive Director of Indonesian Resources Studies (IRIES) Marwan Batubara that the government must be serious or actively involved in encouraging the development of bioethanol, for example to mobilize the potential of SOEs, finance so that they can provide bioethanol raw materials on a mass scale.

"We can or cannot build cassava or sugar cane plantations whose area can produce cheap (ethanol) raw materials," said Marwan.

According to him, if the raw material for bioethanol relies on cassava or sugar cane plantations in terms of production, it will not be able to keep up with CPO production, unless the government wants to intensively plant cassava or sugar cane with a land area of millions of hectares.