Klungkung's pyrolysis centre is put forward as a national model, with the ministry offering to find industrial buyers

A ministerial visit to Kusamba

On Saturday 3 October 2026, Environment Minister Mohammad Jumhur Hidayat travelled to the Tempat Olah Sampah Setempat (TOSS) Center in Dusun Karangdadi, Desa Kusamba, in the Dawan district of Klungkung Regency, Bali. He was received by Klungkung Regent I Made Satria, and the visit was also attended by Ni Nyoman Santi, head of the ministry's environmental control centre for Bali and Nusa Tenggara.

The purpose of the visit was simple. The minister wanted to see for himself whether the regency's pyrolysis line was working as described. What he saw was a facility that heats waste without oxygen to turn it into two products: an alternative liquid fuel comparable to diesel, and briquettes made from pressed organic material that the facility calls green coal.

His verdict was positive, and he framed it in circular economy terms. Klungkung, he said, had shown good initiative in managing its waste by applying a circular economy approach, and he called it good practice. He then made the commitment that gives the visit its weight.

"Jika pengelolaan teknologi pirolisis ini berhasil, saya akan duplikasikan ke daerah-daerah lainnya." (If this pyrolysis management succeeds, I will replicate it in other regions.) Environment Minister Mohammad Jumhur Hidayat, 3 October 2026

The regent read the visit the same way. Speaking to Detik Bali, Satria said the minister had come to confirm that the technology really existed on site, had seen it first hand, and that the model would later be replicated in other regencies and provinces.

What the facility does and how big it is

The TOSS Center line has been built in partnership between the Klungkung regency government, PT Inpac Solution Indo and PT Bali Bersih Bersinar. According to reporting from the visit, each of the facility's pyrolysis units has a capacity of 750 kilograms, and the facility as a whole, running four units, is targeted to process around 26 to 30 tonnes of waste a day.

The route to that point has been staged. In June 2026 the regency trialled its smallest machine. Detik Bali reported at the time that the unit could process 750 kilograms of waste in a single 10 hour cycle, that it had turned 13 used truck tyres into 120 litres of pyrolysis oil in one heating run, and that 200 kilograms of sorted refuse derived fuel had yielded 80 litres of oil. The regent said then that the remaining step was emissions testing, to confirm the operation was genuinely environmentally sound.

By July the regency's environment office was preparing to trial a larger unit, described as having a capacity of 4 tonnes, and awaiting technicians from China to complete commissioning. Local operators were being trained alongside foreign specialists so that the facility would not depend on outside expertise in the long run.

Readers comparing the coverage will notice that capacity figures have varied across the project's stages. July reporting described four units with a combined daily capacity of 168 tonnes, and June coverage spoke of the technology being able to handle around 400 tonnes a day against a regency output of roughly 200 tonnes. The figure given at the ministerial visit, 26 to 30 tonnes a day across four units, is the most recent and the one this brief treats as the operating target. The differences most likely reflect design capacity versus the current operating configuration, and they are a reminder that a pilot's numbers settle as it moves from trial to routine operation.

The missing piece is a buyer

The most useful moment of the visit was a candid one. The regent told the minister that the facility does not yet have a clear offtaker for what it produces, and asked for the ministry's help in building a market, perhaps through state owned enterprises such as Pertamina.

This is the right problem to surface, and it is common to almost every regional waste to fuel project. A pyrolysis plant can run well technically and still struggle if its oil and briquettes have nowhere reliable to go. Without a contracted buyer, output accumulates, revenue is uncertain, and the operating cost of the facility falls back on the regional budget.

The minister's response was direct. The government, he said, would step in if there were difficulties with buyers, and the ministry would open communication with industry. ANTARA reported that industrial users have themselves already contacted the ministry looking for sources of supply, which suggests the demand side exists and needs connecting rather than creating.

The demand for lower carbon industrial fuel is already there. What regional plants like Klungkung need is a reliable bridge to it, and the ministry has now offered to build one.

The minister also set out why industry should be interested. Energy intensive users that switch part of their fuel to waste derived products reduce their dependence on fossil fuels, and the emissions reductions they achieve can be recognised as carbon credits, which supports company Net Zero Emission targets and competitiveness in export markets that increasingly ask about embedded carbon.

Geography and scale

Two practical constraints were discussed openly, and both have solutions.

The first is distance. Bali is small, and most large industrial fuel users are on Java. Shipping briquettes or oil across the strait adds cost, and the minister acknowledged this, saying the government would help with negotiation and shipping arrangements.

The second is scale. A single regency produces a modest volume of waste compared with a metropolitan area, and pyrolysis economics improve with throughput. The minister's suggestion was to consolidate processing across several regencies. Processing 1,000 tonnes together, he noted, behaves very differently in unit cost and labour efficiency from processing 100 tonnes separately. Pooling feedstock from neighbouring districts would raise volumes into the thousands of tonnes, lower the cost per tonne and make the model more attractive to investors.

That logic connects to national work already under way. In September the energy ministry began testing fuel samples from 12 existing waste to fuel locations to establish a product specification and a route to distribution permits. A clear specification is what allows an industrial buyer or a state energy company to sign a supply contract with confidence. Klungkung's output, if tested against that specification, would be in a far stronger position to find a long term offtaker.

Sirkularium's view

The Klungkung visit is a small event with a large signal. A minister has put a regency scale facility forward as a candidate national model and, in the same breath, accepted that the ministry has a role in closing the market gap. That is the correct sequence. Technology is rarely the binding constraint on regional waste to fuel. Offtake is.

For government and public institutions, three practical points follow.

First, offtake should be designed in, not added later. Regional governments considering pyrolysis or refuse derived fuel lines can learn from Klungkung by approaching potential buyers, including state owned enterprises and cement or industrial users, before procurement is finalised, and by agreeing a product specification early. The ministry's offer to broker these conversations is an opportunity regional governments should take up quickly.

Second, regional clustering deserves a formal vehicle. The minister's 1,000 versus 100 tonne comparison points toward inter regency cooperation agreements in which several districts send sorted feedstock to a shared facility. Bali, with its provincial push to end collect and dump disposal and its strong village level sorting networks, is a natural place to pilot such an arrangement, and the same model would suit clusters of regencies elsewhere.

Third, verification is what turns a promising pilot into a bankable one. Completed emissions testing, consistent capacity reporting, and fuel samples tested against the national specification will give buyers and financiers the confidence to commit. Publishing those results also helps other regions decide whether the model fits their own waste composition.

What to watch next: whether the ministry names specific industrial or state owned buyers for Klungkung's output, whether the facility moves steadily toward its 26 to 30 tonne daily target, and whether neighbouring Bali regencies explore sending feedstock to Kusamba. If those pieces come together, Klungkung will have shown not only that waste can become fuel, but that a regional government can sell it.