The risk of a spike in energy prices becomes a new year's 'gift' for manufacturing industry players. In addition to the basic electricity tariff (TDL) which is planned to increase in line with the cut in subsidies for PLN, the plan to phase out Premium and Pertalite fuel oil is also expected to raise logistics costs. From the demand side, the public is also faced with an increase in the price of non-subsidized liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) by Rp. 1,600 to Rp. 2,600 per kilogram. Secretary General of the Indonesian Olefin, Aromatic and Plastic Association (Inaplas) Fajar Budiono said that the high price of energy has encouraged business players to innovate in the production sector, such as replacing machine tools with more efficient ones.

"From the business side, we, who already have a Proper certificate [from the Ministry of LHK], are also required to reduce the energy consumption consumed every year by replacing new parts that are more energy efficient," he said, Monday (10/1/2022).

 This, continued Fajar, is also in line with the shift in consumption to renewable energy. He underlined that the price of energy produced by solar panels is close to the cost of electricity from PLN, although it can only replace about 20-30 percent.

In addition, the use of other renewable energy sources must also be adapted to the geographical conditions and resources of each region.

Fajar said that the renewable energy source that has the opportunity to be used massively by the industry today is biomass.

"We have a lot of biomass, starting from leftover rice, corn, palm oil, rubber, sugar cane. Therefore, the research has started to be reproduced, he said.

It is known, apart from textiles, petrochemicals are one of the energy-hungry sub-sectors. On the other hand, there is a discourse on cutting electricity subsidies for PLN by around 8.13 percent, from Rp. 61.53 trillion to Rp. 56.5 trillion this year. This will have an impact on the increase in TDL because the basic costs of providing electricity are hoisted.

Not to mention the risk of increasing electricity rates from the implementation of the carbon tax, which in the first year is targeting steam power plants (PLTU), although the government does not yet have a roadmap and technical guidelines for its implementation.v