Challenges

With rising global energy consumption, the potential for renewable energy is of interest for countries around the world as not only can it help meet energy needs for social and economic development, but it is an effective tool for mitigating the effects of climate change. However, many countries, particularly in the global South, lack sufficient technology and resources for renewable energy development.

The need for renewable energy sources will keep increasing in the coming decades as the imperative to reduce greenhouse gas emissions intensifies. Therefore, it is important that countries focus on investing in and planning for renewable energy development. To achieve this, countries of the global South need to establish partnerships with each other and the North that benefit all parties by improving renewable energy. Such cooperation is required to achieve many of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in particular SDG 7 (affordable and clean energy) and SDG 17 (partnership for the goals).

Toward a Solution

Indonesia is an important player in South-South cooperation, contributing to international development through various means. One of them is by conducting capacity-building programmes for fellow developing countries to facilitate meaningful knowledge and experience exchanges. Indonesia implements numerous capacity-building programmes in fields such as renewable energy, climate change, agriculture, health and gender equality. In the field of renewable energy, Indonesia often partners with the German development cooperation agency GIZ as Germany puts renewable energy high on its global development agenda and renewable energy is a key concern in its official development cooperation.

The South-South and Triangular Cooperation in Renewable Energy (SSTC RE) initiative is a joint Indonesian-German project that strengthens country capacities for policy planning for implementation of the 2030 Agenda in Indonesia and other countries of the global South. The initiative is designed to create and strengthen cross-country partnerships for renewable energy development through knowledge and experience sharing and understanding how to utilize triangular cooperation in the sector.

The initiative is implemented in close coordination with the National Coordination Team of South-South Cooperation of Indonesia. Activities are covering strategic areas on renewable energy, such as mini-grid, off-grid and renewable energy utilization for non-electricity fields, along with cross-cutting approaches, including public-private partnerships and mainstreaming gender in renewable energy, which is in line with the spirit of Leaving No One Behind in the 2030 Agenda.

In 2021, two renewable energy knowledge sharing activities took place (virtually due to COVID-19 travel restrictions), with 51 attendees in the first round and 33 returning for the second round (of whom 23 in total were women), from Indonesia, Madagascar and Nepal. At these virtual conferences, speakers from the energy sector and country representatives shared knowledge and experiences in harnessing renewable energy in their countries, identified challenges and discussed good practices and innovations. Participants provided feedback and suggestions to improve the initiative going forward.

This first phase of the initiative enabled participants to identify potential areas of collaboration, learn from each other, discuss innovations and potentially identify and implement best practices to improve renewable energy in their home countries. The goal is for countries to establish more and deeper partnerships that can lead to concrete results in renewable energy development. The initiative is expected to continue to conduct training and build strong partnerships among participants in the field of renewable energy.