The Millennium Challenge Account-Indonesia was implemented the Green Prosperity Project from 2013 to 2018, with the support of the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC). The project demonstrated the feasibility of reducing GHG emissions from palm oil mills by generating renewable electricity from palm oil mill effluent. Musim Mas, a global company with activities across the palm oil supply chain, and MCC co-financed the installation of equipment and facilities at three mills to generate electricity from recovered biogas. Each of the mills produces more than 8.5 gigawatt hours (GWh) of electricity and reduces its GHG emissions by nearly 55,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) every year.
This paper presents lessons learned from these efforts and identifies the potential benefits of replicating these efforts at additional mills. The findings show that if 100 more palm oil mills (13.5 percent of the 742 mills in Indonesia in 2015) recovered biogas from palm oil mill effluent, annual net electricity generation could conservatively exceed 400 GWh—enough to meet the needs of approximately 240,000 Indonesian households, and annual GHG emission reductions could approach 2.6 million metric tons of CO2e. This highlights that turning palm oil mill effluent into renewable electricity could make a significant contribution to Indonesia's efforts to achieve its GHG emission reduction targets in its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC).