Bekasi. Australia is helping coal-reliant Indonesia shift to renewable energy sources, even providing funding for a solar roof on top of one of its shopping centers. 

Australia has assisted a local energy firm, Hijau, in installing solar panels on the rooftop of Lippo Mall Cikarang. This solar roof, whose construction takes place in two phases, can generate approximately 1,300 megawatt-hours (MWh) a year for the mall that lies in one of West Java's hottest areas. 

Jeremy Cleaver, the independent investment committee member at Australian Development Investments (ADI), revealed more details about this project’s funding scheme during a site visit to the Cikarang project. ADI is putting some of its money into SEACEF II, short for South East Asia Clean Energy Fund II. The SEACEF II is a blended investment fund run by Singapore-based fund manager Clime Capital and invests in businesses that back the region’s low-carbon transition.

"So the SEASEF II has invested $10 million in Hijau, namely all the sites that the company is developing,” Cleaver told reporters on the sidelines of the site visit on Monday afternoon. 

“And this is an equity investment for Hijau, so it does not need to be paid back. But at some point, the investment will need to be sold, and hopefully, the fund will make a return, to later be invested in other opportunities,” Cleaver said. 

Cleaver said that SEASEF II was also open to funding other renewable energy sources, thus alluding to the possibility of more Australian investment in Indonesia’s transition away from coal. He added: “The current government also seems very welcoming of investment. ... Indonesia is a very large country from a population perspective and has lots of sunshine. So the opportunity to generate renewable energy is fantastic.” 

Indonesia intends to reach net-zero emission by 2060. A few months ago, President Prabowo Subianto even revised the target to 2050, setting an even more ambitious goal for Indonesia. The Prabowo government recently unveiled its long-term electricity business plan, better known by its Indonesian acronym RUPTL. According to the newly launched document, the country intends to add 17.1 gigawatts of solar power in its energy mix by 2034.

During a Jakarta visit a few weeks ago, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese revealed his country planned on adding 50 million Australian dollars ($77 million) to the green infrastructure funding under the so-called KINETIK, another climate-related bilateral funding scheme. Through KINETIK, the close neighbor is investing about 200 million Australian dollars worth of climate financing for Indonesia. ADI is one of KINETIK’s partners. 

“For Australia, the deepening of our [bilateral] trade and the strengthening of [our] investment in Indonesia is natural and vital, but it is not inevitable to convert extraordinary potential into concrete progress,” Albanese said in his joint press statement with Prabowo at the time.

Official statistics showed that Australia had invested $141.3 million in Indonesia in the first quarter of 2025. The Indonesian government, however, did not give details on how much of those Australian investments went into the renewable energy sector. Indonesia-Australia trade also amounted to $3 billion over the same three-month period.

Add as a preferred source on Google +