Marlina Lumban Gaol retweetledi

Had a thoughtful discussion with Sigit Puji Santosa, Nadia Habibie, and Bagus Muljadi. Asserted and exerted a possible idea, even hypothesis: one that mandates as much intellectual resource as possible into the realization of building 30 gigawatts of power generation capabilities on an annual basis.
A feat attributable to the following considerations:
(1) Increasing per capita electrification from the current 1,300 kWh to 10,000 kWh is necessary not only for modernization, but more importantly, for the nation to be able to be a stakeholder (instead of a spectator) of the AI narrative.
The AI narrative will pervasively be much more agentic, not generative, which requires disproportionately more energy. Should we have the right resources, Indonesia could possibly create a non-linear event, a Sputnik or DeepSeek event, someday.
(2) Yet a 30 gigawatt per year initiative requires around USD 45 billion capital allocation per year. Building this annually will, in around 20 years, take us from 1,300 kWh to 10,000 kWh per capita, an additional 600 gigawatts beyond the pre-existing 90-100 gigawatts already built so far. A precursor to modernization and a robust renewable energy narrative.
This amount of capital allocation involves not only the arrival of new technology and liquidity, but also employment: at least a net increment of 12 million jobs per year. This will help formalize the large chunk of the informal sector (known as gig economy) estimated to hover around 75 million informal jobs. This could be remedied in a finite number of years.
(3) A multipolar world order requires geopolitical dexterity that allows one to swing as if no one is an enemy and a thousand friends are too few. Yet multipolarity also entails a higher degree of proliferation of many variables, one of which is technology. Technologically, humanity is gifted with an exponential increase in cost efficiency and effectiveness in renewable energy. Solar energy cost has dwindled from 44 cents to 4 cents per kWh, while battery storage has gone from USD 3,000 to around USD 100 per kWh. This fits squarely into the affordability of Indonesians and the citizenry of the Global South.
The sustainability narrative essentially consists of energy transition and circularity. The latter is equally complex. Yet resolving the former will set the necessary foundation to more expediently resolve the latter.
Two possible key elements in constructing such a foundation:
(1) recruiting and properly compensating high quality teachers who will infuse imagination, ambition, and smart luck across the nation;
(2) and managing and democratizing talent in picking the best, including through collaboration with great universities around the world, so that there's an optimal intersection between talent and power - technocratization.
Managing talent involves four dimensions: brain train, involving local indigenous talent of scale (Japan); brain gain, opening the gate for talent from around the world to help build (Australia, the US); brain circulation, sending scales of raw talent abroad to seek and polish, then return (China); and brain linkage, sending raw talent abroad to seek, polish, and link wisdom back to the origin (India). Indonesia can learn, adopt, and embellish these playbooks for its own nation building.
But it’s important to note that: supply side economics requires meticulous thinking about ways and forms of execution. This ostensibly and inevitably involves decision-making technocracy, increasingly an endangered species. Once done right, wonders arrive.
May this possible hypothesis be contemplated upon, and tested.


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