Geothermal
Indonesia sits on one of the largest geothermal resource bases in the world and has converted a good deal less of it than the geology suggests it should. The constraint is rarely the reservoir. It is usually some combination of tariff, permitting and land access, along with the patience required to hold a position through a development cycle where the drilling risk comes first and the revenue arrives years behind it. Developers who understand the resource but not that sequence tend to run short of capital before the field is producing.
Bret Mattes was CEO of Star Energy for seven years. It operates the Wayang Windu geothermal field in West Java. He is currently Senior Advisor on power generation at PT Pertamina (Persero), and Chairman of the Association of Low Carbon Businesses in Indonesia.
That combination matters more than it might sound. The technical case for a geothermal project and the case that a state utility, a regulator and a provincial government will each accept are not the same document, and they are rarely written by the same person.
Advisory on the geothermal project, including the case put to the state government and its energy authorities.
Benoit Prim on utility-scale renewable construction, Bill Sinclair on consulting engineering and project management, and Rod Williams on energy business development across Asia.