Policy and Strategic Perspectives on the Application of Cold Plasma Technology for Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) and Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage (CCUS) in Indonesia

Controlling carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions remains a central challenge in Indonesia’s energy transition and its commitment to achieving net-zero emission targets. Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) and Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage (CCUS) are widely recognized as important mitigation pathways, particularly for energy and industrial sectors where rapid decarbonization remains difficult. In parallel, cold plasma technology has emerged in the recent scientific literature as an early-stage, non-thermal approach for CO2 activation under relatively low bulk temperature conditions, attracting interest as a potential long-term research pathway. This paper examines cold plasma technology within the broader CCS/CCUS landscape in Indonesia from a policy and technology perspective. The study adopts a qualitative and descriptive approach, synthesizing the selected academic literature on plasma-based CO2 conversion, global CCUS development trends, and Indonesia’s regulatory, infrastructural, and energy system context. Rather than assessing techno-economic feasibility, the analysis focuses on identifying structural constraints, performance trade-offs, and policy-relevant considerations. The findings indicate that across plasma configurations, including dielectric barrier discharge, gliding arc, microwave, and radio frequency plasmas, current research outcomes remain constrained by low energy efficiency, limited scalability, and low technology readiness for large-scale applications. Reported performance metrics are largely derived from laboratory-scale studies under controlled conditions and cannot yet be extrapolated to real-world emission sources without a comprehensive system-level evaluation. Compared with established CCS and CCUS pathways, cold plasma technologies remain exploratory and lack the maturity required for near-term deployment. From a policy and research perspective, cold plasma should therefore be regarded as a long-term research option rather than an implementable mitigation solution for Indonesia, with its potential contribution lying in informing future research agendas, technology monitoring, and innovation planning, particularly in relation to CO2 utilization concepts and decentralized energy systems, contingent upon significant advances in energy performance, system integration, and standardized evaluation frameworks.