JAKARTA, thekabarnews.com – President Prabowo Subianto has instructed ministers to prepare land and processing facilities. This is so Indonesia can produce enough domestically sourced ethanol for E20 fuel within two years, Coordinating Food Minister Zulkifli Hasan (Zulhas) said on Wednesday, September 16.

E20 is gasoline blended with 20 percent ethanol. Speaking after a meeting chaired by Prabowo at the Presidential Palace in Jakarta, Zulkifli said the agriculture ministry would draw up the land plan. Meanwhile, state investment agency Danantara would develop the industry needed to turn crops into fuel.

“We discussed how, within the next two years, we could produce at least E20,” Zulhas said, according to the state secretariat.

“The agriculture minister was therefore asked to prepare a plan, including the land, while Danantara will handle the industrial side.”

The government sees sugarcane as the most immediately viable feedstock, Zulhas said. Officials are examining about 2 million hectares of existing plantation land across Java, Sumatra, Kalimantan and Papua for the plan.

His statement described land the government aims to secure. However, the government has not confirmed that farmers have already planted sugarcane on all 2 million hectares or that the entire area is available for ethanol production.

Land supply has been a bottleneck, Zulhas acknowledged. He said the government wanted all sugarcane for the E20 program to come from domestic sources. Furthermore, he viewed the proposed blend as a step toward a higher ethanol proportion in the longer term. The government has not announced a firm date for nationwide E20 sales.

The scale of the proposed program will also test Indonesia’s processing capacity. Sugarcane must move through cultivation, collection and ethanol production before fuel suppliers can blend the finished product into gasoline. Preparing land alone will not deliver an E20 supply.

Indonesia already has a technical specification for a gasoline product containing 5 percent bioethanol, or E5. The Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry established it in 2023.

That earlier standard shows the country has experience with a lower blend. However, E20 would require a much larger and more reliable supply chain.

The energy ministry’s biofuel policy calls for blends to advance in stages according to feedstock, infrastructure and industry readiness. For now, Prabowo’s instruction sets a planning target.

The government must still identify suitable land and build production capacity. In addition, it must establish how much ethanol suppliers can deliver before it can meet that target.