The Government of the Republic of Indonesia is carrying out a national energy mix target commitment of 23% is come from renewable energy by 2025. To achieve these targets, the National Energy General Plan (RUEN) stipulated through Presidential Regulation (Perpres) Number 22 Year 2017, serves as a reference for development planning in energy sector for central and regional Governments. In the regulation, the target is separated into electricity and non- electricity. Most of the time, Government is focus on electricity target which is still struggling to compete with fossil fuel-based electricity. For non-electricity, the main attention is going to biodiesel that being pushed by the government via B-30 program. In the other side, biogas not yet get the same attention from the government despite of its big potential.
Based on the regulation, the utilization target for biogas for non-electricity application is 489,8 million m3. Most of this application come from communal biogas program that convert manure into biogas that used for cooking gas, while there is huge potential of biogas that not yet utilized from palm oil mill effluent (POME). With the current technology, biogas can be upgraded into biomethane and can be used for various application. Biogas upgrading application already widely utilized in Europe and USA as environmentally friendly vehicle fuel. But in Asia and especially Southeast Asia, biogas upgrading application is still limited and mostly is funded partially by government and not commercially feasible yet. In Indonesia, only one project of biogas upgrading into biomethane plant currently in construction and others is still wait and see the development of the projects. This study aims to give an overview of the utilization, technology, financial and market potential of biomethane from palm oil mill effluent (POME) in Indonesia.