Danantara selects eight partner consortiums to build Indonesia's next waste to energy plants

What Danantara announced

On 14 July 2026, PT Danantara Investment Management, Indonesia's state investment fund, together with its waste to energy subsidiary PT Daya Energi Bersih Nusantara (Denera), named eight preferred partner consortiums for the second phase of the national Pengolahan Sampah menjadi Energi Listrik (PSEL) programme, Indonesia's push to convert municipal waste into electricity. The selection covers eight development locations spanning 20 regencies and cities: Medan Raya, Kabupaten Bekasi, Lampung Raya, Serang Raya, Semarang Raya, Surabaya Raya, Bogor Raya 2, and Yogyakarta Raya.

Fadli Rahman, Director of Investment at Danantara Investment Management and chief executive of Denera, said the entire selection process was conducted objectively, based on good governance principles and referencing international best practice. Denera received 68 proposals from 85 pre qualified providers on its selected provider list for the eight locations, a marked increase from the 24 participants in the programme's first phase. Pandu Sjahrir, chief executive of Danantara Investment Management, framed the outcome as an opportunity to accelerate technology transfer, build national capacity, and strengthen Indonesia's waste management industry ecosystem.

Each of the eight locations now has one primary partner and one backup, but the designations are conditional. Selected consortiums have been issued a Conditional Letter of Award and must still complete a feasibility study acceptable to both sides, finalize project structuring, form a joint venture company, and secure financing approval before receiving a Final Letter of Award.

Who is building what, and where

Four of the eight winning consortiums are led by Indonesian companies, two by French firms, and two by Chinese firms, with participants also drawn from Japan and India across the wider bidding pool. Familiar names in Indonesian industry and energy feature prominently. PT Chandra Waste Energy, a subsidiary of petrochemical group PT Chandra Asri Pacific Tbk, joins Beijing GeoEnviron Engineering and Tech and Masa Depan Energi Indonesia in the consortium selected for Serang Raya, a facility planned to process 1,161 tonnes of waste a day. PT Bakrie Power, part of the Bakrie Group, is in the Surabaya Raya consortium alongside PT Acritas Karya Persada and SUS Indonesia Holding. PT Pertamina Power Indonesia, the new energy arm of state oil company Pertamina, is paired with Tianjin TEDA Environmental Protection and CITICC International Investment for Yogyakarta Raya.

International utilities with established waste to energy track records also feature: France's SUEZ, through its SUEZ Insan Asia joint venture, was selected for Medan Raya, and compatriot Veolia Environmental Services Asia was selected for Semarang Raya. China's Everbright, operating as Everbright Cemerlang Energy, was chosen for Kabupaten Bekasi.

How this fits the national programme

Phase two follows the first phase of the PSEL programme, whose flagship project, the Denpasar Raya facility in Bali, broke ground on 8 July 2026 with a signed power purchase agreement with state utility PLN. That project, valued at roughly Rp 3 trillion, is designed to process more than 500,000 tonnes of waste a year and is targeted for completion by the end of 2027, according to Danantara chief executive and Minister of Investment and Downstreaming Rosan Perkasa Roeslani.

Officials have described the Denpasar plant as the first of a much larger rollout. The Ministry of Environment has said PSEL facilities are planned across 34 agglomeration areas nationwide, intended to resolve waste management gaps in 60 to 70 cities and regencies, though some reporting on the programme's scale cites slightly different figures, 33 facilities and 61 districts, underscoring that the full national rollout is still being finalized rather than fixed. One account of the broader programme puts total investment at approximately USD 5 billion once all planned facilities are built, a figure that has not been officially confirmed by Danantara for phase two specifically.

Muhammad Qodari, head of the Government Communications Board (Bakom), described PSEL as part of a broader effort to deliver a more sustainable solution to Indonesia's waste problem, and separately warned that without integrated waste management, the country's disposal sites risk reaching total capacity by 2028, a warning consistent with the government's stated deadline for closing open dumping operations nationwide.

Why this matters for government stakeholders

For a government and public sector audience, the notable feature of phase two is not any single plant but the shift in how it is being financed and delivered. Rather than each regency separately courting an international waste to energy developer, a state investment vehicle is running one national, competitive process, pre qualifying providers, comparing proposals against uniform governance standards, and pairing successful bidders with a backup partner at each site to reduce the risk that any single location stalls. The jump from 24 bidders in phase one to 68 proposals in phase two suggests the model is drawing more serious commercial interest as it demonstrates it can move projects from selection to groundbreaking, as Denpasar Raya already has.

The mix of partners is also instructive. Half the winning consortiums are led by Indonesian companies, including established energy and petrochemical names, working alongside experienced international waste to energy operators such as SUEZ, Veolia, and Everbright. That combination points to a deliberate approach: pairing technology and operating experience from abroad with capital and project delivery capacity at home, rather than relying entirely on either.

What comes next

The eight selected consortiums must now clear the conditions attached to their Conditional Letter of Award, feasibility studies, project structuring, joint venture formation, and financing approval, before any of the twenty locations reaches a Final Letter of Award and, eventually, groundbreaking. Denpasar Raya's roughly one year path from groundbreaking to a targeted 2027 completion offers a rough benchmark, though each of the twenty new locations will have its own waste composition, land, and grid connection considerations to work through. Bekasi and Bogor Raya 2 have been mentioned in reporting as likely to reach inauguration relatively soon among the phase two group.

Sirkularium's view

For government and public institutions watching Indonesia's circular economy transition, Danantara's phase two selection is a useful signal that the financing model piloted in Bali is being deliberately scaled, not treated as a one off. A national investment fund running a standardized, competitive selection process, with a documented governance rationale and a backup partner at every site, is closer to the kind of institutional discipline that attracts serious international operators and lowers execution risk across many locations at once. The open question, and the one worth tracking through the rest of 2026, is how quickly these eight conditional awards convert into signed joint ventures and financed projects, since that conversion rate will say more about the programme's real pace than the selection announcement itself. Regencies still relying on open dumping, and the national deadline to end that practice, give this programme's execution speed real urgency beyond its own investment case.