Powering Food and Agriculture from Geothermal Energy in Mountainous West Java Communities
The most enormous growth of Geothermal Energy by far happened in Indonesia, which saw an addition of 143 MW in capacity with two new plants, followed by Chile (addition at Cerro Pabellon) and Turkey. It stood at 2,276 MW, and about 40% of the world's Geothermal energy -the huge Geothermal potential of the spectacular mountain ranges in Java and Sumatra, volcanic Indonesia's so-called “Ring of Fire”. However, Indonesia only uses 4-5% of its Geothermal capacity, although the utilization of Geothermal Energy has a high potential to provide long-term and secure base-load energy, including greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions. Geothermal exploration in Indonesia is constrained by the poor infrastructure in remote areas, resistance by local communities, and the conflict of bureaucracy.
The main reason why these obstacles occurred is that the local communities or governments (PEMDA) were disadvantaged due to an education gap, a lack of transparency, and how they receive information from a colonial worldview. About impact should be understood by every level of society and need to be anticipated to achieve an effective result of the green energy transition.
As the project is located in the mountain regions and forest conservation areas, this has created several conflicts regarding the indigenous/local communities and raised gender issues in biodiversity conservation. I Riza Annisa from Indonesia believe that by using storytelling to communicate the science and the experience, the knowledge from both sides between indigenous perspective and scientist/researcher will be described in more than datasets, but also narrative form. The moment when we a human listen to another human’s stories, rather than some raw data, we will plunge into the storyteller's feelings and build a connection unconsciously. The sense of direction will appear, bringing us to something barely visible in the distance -the emotions of empathy.
The elements of stories can be used to enhance the knowledge of science about climate change. By compelling and moving stories from the communities on the ground, the perspectives can be built from the character, conflict, structure, metaphor, and description.