PHOTO: TSE Group director Luwy Leunufna, during his session at ASEIC’s Global Eco-Innovation Forum in Jakarta, Wednesday (11/01).
JAKARTA – On Wednesday, November 1st 2023, ASEM SMEs Eco-Innovation Center (ASEIC) held the 2023 Global Eco-Innovation Forum in Jakarta. Influential energy figures such as Korean and Indonesian ministry representatives, academicians, and global and local experts participated in the event themed “Enable the ESG and Carbon Neutrality Transition for SMEs”.
One of the speakers was none other than Tunas Sawa Erma (TSE) Group’s director, Luwy Leunufna. TSE Group is an oil palm plantation and processing corporate group, with bases in South Papua and North Maluku. It commits to the No Deforestation, Peat, and Exploitation (NDPE) policy in its operations.
The NDPE commitment creates specific goals for the agricultural industry and focuses on protecting natural resources, as well as the people growing them and living among them. “We pledge to comply with local regulations and international market standards. It is our hope that our current and future efforts be accepted by all parties,” Leunufna said.
Set on keeping its word, the corporation joins the Net Zero Emissions movement, which aims to reduce greenhouse gas output and contribute to Indonesia’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) goals by 2030. Not long ago, the country reaffirmed its targets of 29% by its own efforts and 41% with international help.
TSE Group is taking concrete steps to achieve this with a biogas power plant. The facility helps cut down emissions by preventing methane release to the atmosphere, thus offering a solution to limit oil palm plantations’ methane footprint that generally comes from palm oil mill effluent (POME) production.
Aside from building a biogas plant, the company group stops its use of chemical fertilizers and replaces them with their organic counterparts, made up of empty fruit bunches and oil palm shells. After POME, chemical fertilizers make the second largest source of methane emissions, mainly due to their nitrogen oxide discharge in production and impact on global warming that’s 300 times bigger than carbon dioxide.
TSE Group has also purchased a facility for biochar development. Biochar is a type of carbon with long storage ability, produced through thermo-chemically converting (a method also known as pyrolysis) massive amounts of plantation byproducts. With this move, the corporation hopes to make its farms GHG-neutral and help put a stop to climate change.
On top of that, it strives to maintain Papua’s biodiversity by running an endemic species conservation program for pig-nosed turtles and birds-of-paradise, where a research center and nature reserve are being established.
“By making use of the infrastructure available, we [TSE Group] are showing our support for Papuan biodiversity research. We signed an MoU with IPB University July last year and now we’re building a research center for pig-nosed turtles and a nature reserve for birds-of-paradise,” Leunufna said.
ASEM SMEs Eco-Innovation Center (ASEIC) is a platform established in 2011 on the principle of promoting Asia-Europe cooperation to generate and boost eco-innovations from small and medium enterprises. (*)
