Excerpt from forestsnews.cifor.org
Indonesia is an energy-rich country, but electricity poor, a situation that Jaya Wahono is determined to change. As director of Clean Power Indonesia (CPI), he has a vision of transforming degraded lands into energy-producing fields by planting fast-growing trees and bamboo.
Wahono grew up in the capital Jakarta on the island of Java with an abundance of electricity, but he is a social entrepreneur, with a strong belief that energy in Indonesia should be universal, climate-friendly, sourced, distributed, and provided domestically.
About 40 percent of the country’s population of 250 million people do not have access to reliable electricity in part due to distribution difficulties across the archipelago of 17,000 islands – 9,000 of which are inhabited.
Most developed countries consume about 9,000 kilowatt hours per person per year, but in Indonesia, on average, electricity consumption is only about 1,000 kilowatt hours per person per year.
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