Bekasi breaks ground on a waste to energy plant with its power contract already signed

A groundbreaking with the contract in hand

On Wednesday 26 August 2026, Coordinating Minister for Food Zulkifli Hasan inaugurated the start of construction on the waste to electricity facility at Kelurahan Ciketing Udik, Kecamatan Bantargebang, in Bekasi, West Java.

Two things happened around that ceremony that matter more than the ceremony itself. The environmental impact approval, the AMDAL, was issued by the environment ministry on 24 August. The power purchase agreement with PLN was signed at the groundbreaking.

That sequence is unusual in Indonesian waste to energy, and it is the reason this project is worth separating from the general run of announcements. A great many PSEL projects have had a groundbreaking. Considerably fewer have had a signed offtake contract at the point the first soil was turned. Without a power purchase agreement, a plant has a construction cost and no contracted revenue, which is precisely why a number of earlier projects stalled after their ceremonies.

The tariff is USD 0.20 per kWh for the full capacity, sold to PLN. Expected output is around 223,000 MWh a year, enough for tens of thousands of households, with close to 1,000 green jobs projected.

Zulkifli placed the project in a national sequence, noting the government had already been to Bali and to Bandung in West Java, and that Bekasi was the third.

The plant and the numbers around it

The facility is designed for 1,500 tonnes of waste a day, using a moving grate incinerator with an air pollution control system specified against the European Union Industrial Emissions Directive. Operation is targeted from the middle of 2028.

Source figures on capacity are not fully consistent. The account of the ministerial inauguration describes 1,000 tonnes a day processed into electricity, while the project documentation and the operator describe 1,500 tonnes a day. The difference is wide enough to state rather than reconcile, and the 1,500 figure is the one attached to the technical specification and the offtake agreement.

The project is delivered by Danantara Indonesia with Daya Energi Bersih Nusantara, through an operating entity named Bekasi Environment Nusantara. Pandu Sjahrir, Chief Investment Officer at Danantara Indonesia, described the launch as a concrete response to the waste problem nationally and in Bekasi specifically. It is Danantara's second PSEL to reach construction, after Denpasar Raya, which started in July 2026.

Bekasi's own position explains the urgency. The city generates about 1,800 tonnes of waste a day. Accumulated material at the site has reached heights of around 60 metres.

West Java Governor Dedi Mulyadi indicated the province would lease land for 30 years where that is needed to support the infrastructure.

The 300 tonnes the plant does not take

A plant sized at 1,500 tonnes a day in a city generating 1,800 leaves roughly 300 tonnes a day outside the facility. Mayor Tri Adhianto Tjahyono put that figure to residents directly rather than leaving it in a technical annex.

There is still the matter of around 300 tonnes of waste that we have to resolve together.

He asked households to sort at home, and schools, shops, offices and markets to separate as well.

Stating the residual gap at a groundbreaking is good practice and not especially common. The temptation at a ceremony is to present the facility as the answer. Naming the 300 tonnes does three useful things. It sets public expectations correctly, so that the plant is not later judged a failure for not doing something it was never sized to do. It gives the sorting campaign a concrete target that residents can understand. And it keeps a budget line open for upstream work that might otherwise be treated as unnecessary once a large facility is under construction.

There is also a technical reason the upstream work matters to the plant itself. A moving grate unit performs against its design output when the feedstock is reasonably consistent and not excessively wet. Diverting organic material upstream raises the calorific value of what arrives, which protects both the electricity output and the operating margin that the tariff is meant to support.

The pyrolysis line running alongside

A second programme is being built next to the incineration plant. Army Chief of Staff General Maruli Simanjuntak described a complementary operation converting accumulated older waste into fuel, at a capacity of 1,500 tonnes a day, which he expected to begin operating early next year.

The distinction between the two is worth holding. The PSEL handles the daily inflow and turns it into electricity under a contracted tariff. The pyrolysis line addresses the legacy stockpile, the material already in the ground, and turns it into a fuel product. One stops the mountain growing. The other starts reducing it.

Officials projected that 70 percent of the city's waste could be processed within two to three years, with Zulkifli setting a national ambition of handling 70 to 80 percent of the waste problem by 2029 and identifying household education and behaviour change as the remainder.

Sirkularium's view for government and public institutions

Three observations for local governments with a PSEL in prospect.

First, and most importantly, on contract sequencing. The single most transferable feature of the Bekasi project is that the AMDAL was issued two days before the groundbreaking and the power purchase agreement was signed at it. Local governments preparing their own projects should treat those two documents, not the ceremony, as the milestone worth announcing. We would encourage every district negotiating a PSEL to publish the status of its environmental approval and its offtake agreement alongside any construction date, because those are what determine whether a date is real.

Second, on publishing the residual gap. Bekasi's 1,800 against 1,500 leaves 300 tonnes a day, and the mayor said so at the ceremony. Every city commissioning a large facility should publish that subtraction at the same moment it publishes the capacity. It protects the upstream budget and it protects the facility from being blamed for a gap it was never designed to close.

Third, on separating legacy from flow. Running an incineration plant for the daily inflow alongside a pyrolysis line for the accumulated stockpile is a sensible division, and districts with deep legacy landfills should consider whether their own plans address both. A facility that only handles daily arrivals leaves the existing mountain in place indefinitely, with the methane generation and fire risk that comes with it.

What to watch next: whether construction holds the mid 2028 operating date, the first tariff payments under the PLN agreement, whether the pyrolysis line begins operating early next year as projected, and whether Bekasi reports progress against the 300 tonne residual gap rather than only against plant construction.

Bekasi turned soil with an approval and a contract in hand. Sirkularium will continue following the build.