Hydrogen Fuel: The Future of Transportation in Indonesia - CNBC Indonesia News

Verda Nano Setiawan, CNBC Indonesia

Wednesday, 01/24/2024 12:45 WIB

Photo: Green hydrogen cylinders are transported using trucks to supply the main hydrogen refueling station for hydrogen vehicles.

Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – The government continues to strive to reduce carbon emissions in the transportation sector. Apart from using electric cars, the government also plans to develop hydrogen fuel as a substitute for fuel oil (BBM).

PLN Indonesia Power President Director Edwin Nugraha Putra projects that the future development of hydrogen cars will be quite bright. The reason is, compared to electric cars, hydrogen fueled cars have a longer range.

He also gave the example that hydrogen fueled cars can usually cover an average distance of up to 800 kilometers (km). Assuming that one kilogram of hydrogen in a vehicle has a range of 100 km.

“There are systems that use 150 bar of hydrogen, there are those that use a 700 bar system that fills instantly. Because one car can hold approximately 5 to 8 kg, where 1 kg can travel 100 km or up to 800 km, even some of the newest cars “It can travel 120 km for 1 kg,” said Edwin on CNBC Indonesia’s Energy Corner program, quoted on Wednesday (24/1/2024).

Apart from that, refueling hydrogen fuel is also faster than recharging electric car batteries, which usually takes quite a long time. Even if the electric car is charged using the ultra fast charging facility.

“Ultra fast charging can maybe take half an hour for a full charge, up to 1 hour, if he’s at home it can take a few hours to charge depending on how much charging there is and the current capacity can cover approximately 400 to 500 km. That means if we go to “Java there needs to be charged several times,” he said.

Meanwhile, Director of the Center of Economic and Law Studies (Celios) Bhima Yudhistira believes that the transition from using oil fuel to hydrogen fuel will be faster. Especially when compared to converting to electric vehicles.

Bhima gave examples of several countries in the world that have developed green hydrogen fuel. One of them is what is done in South Africa.

In this country, green hydrogen is one of the priorities in the energy transition through the Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) scheme to decarbonize transportation, especially replacing fishermen’s diesel. Meanwhile in England, hydrogen fuel has been used to replace oil-fueled (BBM) cars. “The progress of hydrogen is very fast, in fact the transition from petrol cars to hydrogen is thought to be more possible than electric vehicles,” said Bhima.

Therefore, he is optimistic that the transition from using fuel oil to hydrogen will be more progressive than electric vehicles. One of the factors is because the electric vehicle battery supply chain still uses materials obtained from extractive mining.

“There are high levels of carbon emissions during the smelter process and the main source of electricity in Indonesia still uses coal. So automotive companies, especially Japanese manufacturers, are more interested in entering the hydrogen transition than electric vehicles,” he said.

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