Five landfill sites are named for waste to fuel as the specification work begins

From a commitment to a site list

Indonesia's plan to convert landfill plastic into transport fuel has moved from statement of intent to a list of addresses. The energy ministry has set out five locations for pyrolysis facilities: Bantargebang and Sumur Batu in Bekasi, Galuga in Bogor, Sarimukti in Bandung, and Jatibarang in Semarang.

Each facility is designed for 1,000 tonnes of waste a day. Each requires roughly 5 hectares for the plant itself plus a further half hectare for pre treatment, where incoming material is prepared before it enters the process.

Eniya Listiani Dewi, Director General for New, Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation at the energy ministry, has described the process in plain terms.

Plastic waste can produce renewable fuel. We process it through pyrolysis to make diesel or petrol.

The programme sits alongside the commitment signed in August between the army and several local governments to build pre treatment and pyrolysis capacity at landfill sites. General Maruli Simanjuntak as army chief of staff and Coordinating Minister for Food Zulkifli Hasan have both been associated with the push.

What is new here is not the ambition but the engineering detail. A named site, a stated capacity and a land footprint are the things a local government can plan against. They are also the things that can be checked against progress.

The specification problem nobody can skip

The more consequential development is less visible than the site list. The ministry is testing fuel samples drawn from 12 existing locations that already produce fuel from waste, in order to establish a specification and a route to distribution permits.

The reason this matters is that fuel quality from those locations is not uniform. Pyrolysis output varies with feedstock composition, reactor temperature and the quality of the condensation and refining steps. A plant fed clean, sorted polyolefin plastics produces a different liquid from one fed mixed landfill material with residual food waste, chlorine bearing plastics and moisture.

Without an agreed specification, that variability blocks everything downstream. A fuel with no specification cannot be sold at a pump, cannot be blended into the national fuel pool, cannot be insured against engine damage claims, and cannot be priced with confidence in an offtake agreement. It can only be used informally, on site, by the operator that made it.

Setting a specification and issuing distribution permits converts the output from a by product into a commodity. That is the step that determines whether these five facilities have a business model or a stockpile.

Reporting has also raised the comparison against conventional biodiesel, with the suggestion that pyrolysis derived fuel could match or exceed it on some measures. That comparison is worth treating carefully until the specification testing concludes, because it is precisely the question the testing exists to answer.

What 5,000 tonnes a day would mean

Five facilities at 1,000 tonnes a day each represent 5,000 tonnes of daily processing capacity if all are built and run at design capacity.

Against national generation of roughly 144,562 tonnes a day, that is around 3.5 percent. It is a meaningful contribution to the specific sites involved rather than a national solution, and the site selection reflects that. Bantargebang, Sumur Batu, Galuga, Sarimukti and Jatibarang are among the most heavily loaded disposal sites serving Jakarta, Bogor, Bekasi, Bandung and Semarang. These are the places where accumulated material is deepest and where alternatives are most urgently needed.

The choice to site plants at existing landfills rather than at new locations is also deliberate and sensible. The feedstock is already there, in quantity, with no collection cost. Landfill mining of accumulated plastic gives these plants a supply that does not depend on daily household sorting reaching a particular standard first.

The ministry has been open about the constraints: land availability, permitting, and the commercial sale mechanism. Those are the right three to name. Each of the five sites will need its land secured and its permits issued before construction, and the sale mechanism depends on the specification work.

A related thread runs alongside this one. Biogas from waste can be upgraded to biomethane, and licensing for that has been available since the end of 2024, which gives the organic fraction a commercial route of its own.

Where pyrolysis belongs in the hierarchy

One question deserves attention as these five plants move forward, because it determines whether the programme strengthens the circular economy or quietly competes with it.

Pyrolysis and mechanical recycling can draw on the same material. Clean, sorted polyolefin plastic is the best feedstock for a pyrolysis reactor and also the material a mechanical recycler most wants to buy. If a large plant with guaranteed offtake bids for that fraction, it can pull supply away from recyclers who turn plastic back into plastic, which sits higher in the waste hierarchy because it retains the material rather than burning it once.

The design of this programme largely avoids that risk, and it is worth being explicit about why. These plants are sited at landfills and intended to draw on accumulated material, much of which is contaminated, degraded or multilayer, and therefore of little use to a mechanical recycler. Multilayer sachets, heavily soiled film and mixed legacy plastic have no realistic recycling route in Indonesia today. Converting that fraction into fuel is a genuine gain rather than a diversion.

The safeguard is to keep it that way. A feedstock policy that directs recyclable grades to recyclers and reserves pyrolysis for what cannot be recycled would preserve the distinction as these facilities scale.

Sirkularium's view for government and public institutions

Three points for local governments and planners.

First, on the value of a published specification. Local governments negotiating with pyrolysis developers should wait for, or at minimum reference, the national fuel specification before signing an offtake or revenue sharing arrangement. A contract that prices output without a specification transfers the quality risk to the local government, because if the fuel cannot be sold the revenue share is worth nothing. This is the single most important commercial protection available in these deals, and it is arriving shortly.

Second, on land. Each facility needs about 5.5 hectares including pre treatment. Districts hosting one of the five named sites should confirm now whether that land is within the existing landfill boundary or requires acquisition, because acquisition timelines are what most often move a groundbreaking date. Districts hoping to host a future facility should identify and secure a candidate parcel before they are asked for one.

Third, on feedstock strategy. These plants are designed to draw on accumulated landfill material, which is a genuine advantage, but pre treatment capacity is what converts a mixed legacy stockpile into usable feedstock. The half hectare pre treatment allocation per site is small relative to the main plant and easy to underestimate in planning. We would encourage districts to examine the pre treatment design closely, since contamination control is where pyrolysis projects most often underperform their design figures.

What to watch next: publication of the fuel specification and the first distribution permits, land status at each of the five sites, construction start dates, and whether the quality variation found across the 12 tested locations narrows once a standard is in force.

The programme now has addresses, capacities and a specification process. Sirkularium will continue following whether the permits follow.