Indonesia's freight sector gets a dedicated green logistics association as efficiency becomes the shared agenda

Indonesia's freight sector took an organisational step forward on Thursday evening. At Green Logistics Talk #2 in Jakarta, the Indonesian Green Logistics Entrepreneurs Association, known by its Indonesian acronym APGLI, held its soft launch. The event gathered government officials, logistics operators, manufacturers, academics, carbon auditors and industry associations around a single proposition: that moving goods with less energy is a competitiveness strategy first and an environmental strategy second.

That framing came directly from the government side of the room. Agus Justianto, Senior Policy Analyst at the Ministry of Forestry, positioned the logistics sector as a working component of Indonesia's climate architecture rather than a bystander to it, linking freight efficiency to the country's Nationally Determined Contribution and to the FOLU Net Sink 2030 programme.

Green logistics is not merely an environmental agenda. It represents a business strategy, an efficiency strategy, and a competitiveness enhancement strategy.

Netty Sri Rejeki, who chairs APGLI, set the association's purpose in practical terms, saying green logistics cannot remain an ambitious concept that stays out of reach. The association's stated aim is to translate the idea into steps that companies of any size can adopt according to their own operational capacity. Also contributing to the discussion were Agus Purnomo, a supply chain management expert, and Rifka Hidayat, Vice Chairman for International Affairs and Human Resources at the Indonesian Logistics and Forwarder Association.

The numbers behind Indonesia's logistics bill

The economic case is well documented. Indonesia's logistics costs stood at 14.29 percent of gross domestic product in 2022, a figure Bappenas has cited in its planning work. The National Medium Term Development Plan for 2025 to 2029 sets a target of bringing that down to about 12.5 percent of GDP by the end of the period. Reporting on the target is not fully consistent: some coverage cites 12 percent and some cites 12.5 percent for the same 2029 horizon. The longer arc is clearer. The Ministry of Transportation has pointed to 8 percent of GDP as the 2045 ambition.

Roughly two percentage points of GDP is a large prize. It is also, in engineering terms, mostly an efficiency prize. The drivers of high logistics cost that officials repeatedly identify are lengthy cargo handling at ports, incomplete integration between transport modes, and heavy dependence on road haulage. Each of those is simultaneously a cost problem and an energy problem. A truck idling in a port queue burns diesel and produces nothing. A container that travels by road when water or rail was available consumes several times the energy per tonne kilometre.

Indonesia placed 63rd out of 139 countries in the World Bank's 2023 Logistics Performance Index. That ranking is a reasonable proxy for the headroom available, and it affects export competitiveness as much as domestic prices.

Why freight efficiency belongs in the energy conversation

Globally, the freight and logistics sector accounts for approximately 10 to 11 percent of total emissions on World Bank estimates. Freight transport alone represents roughly 40 percent of carbon dioxide emissions from the transport sector. Global road transport emissions ran slightly above 6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2024, with about a third of that coming from trucks.

The single most consequential figure for policy makers is the modal shift number. World Bank estimates indicate that shifting freight from road to rail or water transport can reduce greenhouse gas emissions per tonne kilometre by at least 70 percent. That is not a marginal technology gain. It is the same order of improvement that industry chases through years of process upgrades, available through routing and infrastructure decisions.

The practical levers discussed at the Jakarta event follow directly from this. Energy efficiency in vehicles and warehouses. Route and load optimisation so that fewer kilometres carry more tonnes. Multimodal transport that puts long hauls on rail and water. Low emission vehicles and fuels. Digitalisation to improve traceability across the supply chain, which is what makes any of the preceding levers measurable.

The unit that matters in freight decarbonisation is the tonne kilometre, not the vehicle. A fleet can go electric and still waste energy if it runs half empty on the wrong route.

From a forestry pilot to a cross sector platform

The August meeting was the second in a series. The first Green Logistics Talk convened on 19 February 2026 at the Manggala Wanabakti building in Jakarta, organised by the Ministry of Forestry together with PT Arrakasta Nusalink Logistik and Global Communication Network Indonesia. That first forum was narrower in scope, examining how efficient and low emission supply chain management in the forestry sector could contribute to national climate commitments.

At that session, Agus Justianto served in his capacity as Project Director for FOLU NC-1 and as a member of the Expert Advisory Board for FOLU Net Sink 2030. Mahawan Karuniasa, an environmental expert at the University of Indonesia, connected green logistics to Indonesia's Enhanced NDC targets of 32 percent unconditional and 43 percent conditional emission reductions by 2030. Y.W. Junardy, President of the UN Global Compact Network Indonesia, brought corporate evidence: an IGCN member survey conducted in December 2025 found environmental and energy issues ranking among top business priorities, which suggests the demand side for this agenda is already present.

The progression from a forestry supply chain discussion in February to a general purpose industry association in August is the meaningful part. A sector specific pilot has become a platform with a membership structure, which changes what can be asked of it.

Sirkularium's read for government and public institutions

Three observations follow for policy makers and public institutions.

First, the association gives government a counterparty. Freight decarbonisation policy has historically struggled because the sector is fragmented across thousands of operators of very different sizes. A body that can aggregate positions, distribute technical guidance and report progress lowers the cost of every subsequent policy instrument, from fuel efficiency standards to incentives for fleet renewal.

Second, the cost target and the emissions target should be pursued through the same instruments. The RPJMN logistics cost objective and Indonesia's NDC commitments point at the same interventions: port dwell time reduction, intermodal integration, load factor improvement. Treating them as one programme with one set of indicators is more likely to attract financing than treating them as separate ministerial agendas. Government support for strengthening the national logistics ecosystem, expressed through backing for industry convenings during 2026, provides a base to build on.

Third, measurement deserves early attention. Both Green Logistics Talk sessions gave prominence to carbon accounting and to the auditors who perform it. Without a common method for calculating emissions per tonne kilometre, claims of improvement cannot be verified, incentives cannot be targeted, and Indonesian exporters cannot supply the supply chain data that trading partners increasingly request. A national reporting convention agreed early would cost little and prevent a great deal of later reconciliation work.

What to watch next: whether APGLI publishes a technical baseline and membership criteria, whether the logistics cost target is formally harmonised at 12 or 12.5 percent for 2029, and whether the intermodal projects that carry the largest share of the modal shift opportunity receive dedicated financing in the coming budget cycle.