Unfortunately, energy policymaking in Indonesia remains trapped at the most basic level of participation: tokenism.
Whenever the government drafts a national energy planning document, one word consistently appears in its official narrative: participation. The National Energy General Plan (RUEN), which is currently being revised, is no exception. The public is promised an opportunity to be heard. But the question is no longer whether such a space exists. The real question is whether that space actually changes anything. So far, the answer has been disappointing.
Through Decision No. 91/PUU-XVIII/2020, Indonesia’s Constitutional Court affirmed that meaningful public participation is not merely a ceremonial consultation. Three rights must be fulfilled: the right to be heard, the right for one’s views to be considered, and the right to receive an explanation of how those views have been followed up. This ruling is not merely constitutional rhetoric. It recognizes that substantive democracy does not end with a suggestion box; it depends on whether citizens’ voices can actually influence the direction of policy.
Unfortunately, energy policymaking in Indonesia—including the National Energy Policy (KEN), the National Electricity General Plan (RUKN), the Electricity Supply Business Plan (RUPTL), and the ongoing revision of the RUEN—remains trapped at the most basic level of what Sherry Arnstein (1969) describes as tokenism: communities are invited to consultation forums, attendance sheets are signed, minutes are prepared, and then everything stops there. There is no guarantee that their input will be processed. There is no feedback mechanism explaining why a proposal was accepted or rejected. The public is heard, but not genuinely considered, let alone given an explanation.
This is not merely an administrative flaw. It is a question of legitimacy. When an energy policy will shape the next several decades—determining who may lose their land, who may lose their livelihoods, and who will bear the burden of pollution—yet is developed without substantive involvement from those who will bear its consequences, the policy is flawed from the outset, both legally and socially.
This is not merely a theoretical argument. There are concrete examples of this failure. On Flores Island, the designation of the island as a “Geothermal Island” through Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources Decree No. 2268 K/30/MEM/2017 was essentially a top-down decision that reduced the energy transition to a matter of resource substitution, without adequately considering the social and ecological risks associated with geothermal exploitation—from disruption of water sources to potential conflicts over the living spaces of surrounding communities.
In Pekon Way Haru, Lampung, a centralized solar power plant (PLTS) worth more than IDR 10 billion was built with the good intention of providing electricity access to residents living in an enclave of Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park. But because the project was designed entirely through a top-down approach, without incorporating local knowledge from residents who had already been using independent rooftop solar systems for years, the power plant lasted only about a year before breaking down and being abandoned. No local institutional mechanism was established, and there was no clear arrangement regarding who would be responsible for its maintenance.
These two cases share the same underlying pattern: communities are positioned as passive beneficiaries rather than rights-holders who have a say in determining the form and sustainability of energy systems in their own territories. This pattern could be repeated on a much larger scale if the RUEN revision fails to correct it—particularly as the Government pursues its ambition to develop 100 GW of solar power within the next two to three years. Such an ambitious target requires massive amounts of land. Without guarantees of meaningful participation and protection of tenure rights, this expansion risks triggering new agrarian conflicts, including the dispossession of Indigenous peoples from their living spaces.
The legal framework already exists. Presidential Regulation No. 73 of 2023 on the Procedures for Preparing the National and Regional Energy General Plans requires the preparation of the RUEN and RUED to be transparent and participatory, including providing opportunities for experts and the public to submit ideas, data, and written input within 30 working days of the announcement of the plan to prepare the documents. Article 96 of Law No. 12 of 2011 on the Formation of Laws and Regulations, as amended by Law No. 13 of 2022, also guarantees the public’s right to provide oral and written input at every stage of the legislative process. The problem is not the absence of rules, but weak implementation, which reduces these obligations to the levels of informing and consultation, far from the level of partnership envisioned by the constitutional principle of meaningful participation.
The revision of the RUEN must therefore become a turning point, not merely an administrative adjustment of targets. Several concrete measures need to be pursued.
First, the National Energy Council (DEN) and the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources must hold direct dialogue forums in affected regions—not merely consultations in Jakarta, far removed from the realities of coastal communities, coal miners, or Indigenous communities living around geothermal and large-scale solar projects.
Second, every piece of public input must have a clear trace: whether it was accepted, modified, or rejected, accompanied by reasons that are publicly accessible. Without such a feedback mechanism, the right to “receive an explanation,” as mandated by the Constitutional Court, will remain a normative statement without meaningful force.
Third, groups that have historically been absent from policy-making tables—including women, persons with disabilities, Indigenous peoples, and workers in fossil fuel industries affected by the transition—must be provided with equal channels for participation, rather than being invited merely as a formality at the end of the process.
Fourth, FPIC (Free, Prior and Informed Consent) must be explicitly mandated as a prerequisite before permits for the use of space for large-scale renewable energy projects are issued. This is essential to ensure that accelerating decarbonization does not become a new wave of dispossession and loss of community living spaces.
The Government has strong reasons to move quickly on the energy transition: the urgency of climate targets and international scrutiny of Indonesia’s commitments through the Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) and the Second Nationally Determined Contribution (SNDC). But speed without social legitimacy creates a fragile foundation. Projects built without meaningful participation, as illustrated by the Way Haru case, can ultimately fail precisely because their social governance was neglected from the beginning.
The RUEN revision is an opportunity to demonstrate that Indonesia’s energy transition is not merely about replacing one source of electricity generation with another. It is about rebuilding the relationship between the state and its citizens in managing shared resources. If public participation continues to be reduced to an administrative formality, what we are building is not a just energy transition, but a repetition of the old extractivist model—only wrapped in greener packaging.
The public is not a spectator in this transition. It is time for national energy policy to treat them as equal partners.
Read the full article on Indonesiana.