Indonesia’s Carbon Capture, Utilisation, and Storage Targets: Where Is the Workforce Going to Come From?

With 19 Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) and Carbon Capture, Utilisation, and Storage (CCUS) projects in the pipeline, Indonesia is poised to become a global decarbonisation hub, extending beyond the ASEAN and Asia. After the launch of its first CCUS project in 2023, the 1.8-gigatone facility in West Papua, Indonesia has enacted comprehensive legislations and frameworks, leading to the emergence of several carbon storage and utilisation initiatives planned for commercial operations by 2030.

These, coupled with strong, multi-billion investment signals from major operators and national energy companies, position Indonesia as an epicenter in cross-border carbon transportation and storage, put it closer to achieving net zero emissions by 2060, and stimulate the economy with new GDP injections.

Naturally, conversations about CCS and CCUS implementation challenges have surfaced, but one billion-dollar questions – literally and figuratively – seems amiss:

Where is the workforce going to come from?

Understanding Indonesia’s CCS/CCUS Capacities

Projecting the workforce requirements of the forthcoming CCS/CCUS boom requires understanding the regions’s carbon storage capacity.

Indonesia boasts of the largest sediment basin in Southeast Asia creating ample space for CCS and CCUS facilities. Latest reports estimate the country has a capacity 573 gigatons in saline aquifiers. Suspended oil and gas reservoirs located in Papua, Sulawesi, Kalimantan, Java, and Sumatra account for an additional 4.8 gigatons.

Flagship projects have either been announced or in the works. BP’s Tangguh CCUS is the country’s first at-scale enhanced gas recovery implementation. Designated as a national strategic project, it’s expected to capture 15 million tons of CO2 from Tangguh’s LNG operation, making it one of the world’s lowest carbon emitting plants. CO2 emission reduction is projected to reach 30 million tons by 2035.

In July 2025, Pertamina Hulu Energi (PHE), the upstream arm of major state energy company Pertamina, announced its readiness to develop 12 CCS and CCUS projects, totalling to 7.3 gigatons of CO2 storage and targeting first carbon injection by 2030.

Workforce Demand vs CCS/CCUS Specialists Supply

The domestic CCS and CCUS sector is projected to generate over 38,000 jobs between 2030 and 2045 and add more than USD 2 Billion to Indonesia’s GDP.

Can Indonesia supply enough CCS/CCUS-proficient specialists to the current and upcoming pipeline?

While CCS technologies are well-established globally, they are relatively new to Indonesia. This presents a potential technical skills gap in engineering, operating, and managing these projects which require highly specialised personnel and sophisticated monitoring technologies.

There’s currently no public data as to the exact size of the CCS and CCUS local workforce but based on what’s happening in other countries – regions with longer and more mature CCS and CCUS developments – it’s safe to say that Indonesia’s current manpower is insufficient.

According to the Global CCS Institute, the CCS industry must grow by more than 100 times by 2050 to achieve the Paris Agreement climate targets. This equates to 100,000 construction jobs and ongoing jobs for 30,000 to 40,000 people in terms of operations and maintenance.

Learning Recruiting and Staffing Lessons from Major CCS/CCUS Projects Around the World

Flagship carbon management projects and facilities demonstrate their intensive labour requirements. At the height of the Boundary Dam CCS facility in Canada, the first power plant in the world to successfully utilise CCS, it employed a total construction workforce of 1,700 personnel plus ongoing roles for operations and maintenance.

In the UK, the Carbon Capture & Storage Association (CCSA) which represents 120 member companies across the carbon management value chain has identified roles that are high demand and difficult to recruit. This includes pipefitters, welders, health and safety professionals, project managers, construction managers, and subsea engineers.

They also several challenges that need to be addressed to enable on-time CCS/CCUS workforce deployment. Specifically, to Indonesia, the following are the most important and possibly the most challenging to solve:

• Lack of skills training and adoption in several crucial areas which are critical for a competent CCS/CCUS workforce
• Limited awareness of the specific carbon management skillsets
• International and local workforce competition
• Difficulty of recruiting workers in a high demand, low supply region

Brunel’s 2025 Global Talent & Tech Trends 2025 report concur with these findings, with 51% of C-suite leaders in conventional energy citing skills shortages as the biggest barrier to scaling CCS and CCUS.

While CCS and CCUS share some DNA with the more established conventional energy,  it is not a discipline that Indonesia has had the opportunity of developing at scale. The country has taken steps to bridge the project pipeline and local expertise with the establishment of the national think tank Indonesia Carbon Capture and Storage Center (ICCSC). However, its capacity to meet workforce demands for immediate and future projects is still in question.

Expat Talents Are an Option, But with Limitations

Indonesia does not have a hard cap on the number of foreign workers a company can hire. However, regulatory frameworks make deploying a predominantly expatriate team extremely challenging.

Indonesian law generally requires a minimum ratio of local to foreign workers within the same entity, and all foreign hires must go through the RPTKA approval process, regardless of the number of expats on the payroll. This involves formally demonstrating that no qualified Indonesian national exists for the position.

For CCS or CCUS-specific roles where specialists are scarce even globally, this case is easier to make in principle, but the approval process still takes time and cannot be rushed.

Additionally, Indonesia's TKDN local content framework factors workforce composition into a project's overall local content rating, though the calculation is more nuanced than a simple headcount. Rather than a strict citizen percentage threshold, labor content credit is assessed based on the proportion of compensation costs (salaries, allowances, and facilities) paid to Indonesian workers relative to total labor costs. The specific requirements can also vary depending on the project, the project holder, and the regulatory bodies setting the Local Content Requirements. Falling short of these targets has real consequences for procurement standing with SKK Migas.

For CCS and CCUS operators, this means hiring foreign expertise may work as an initial strategy, but local workforce skills development needs to be considered from day one — not as an afterthought.

Consultative CCS/CCUS Recruitment, Workforce Solutions, and Delivery

Given the relatively early stages of CCS and CCUS in Indonesia and Asia in general, the nuanced regulations, and the scarcity of carbon management-ready specialists, there’s currently no template when it comes to recruiting, deployment, and workforce management.

One thing’s for sure: these conversations need to happen as early as possible in the CCS/CCUS project lifecycle.

This is also where Brunel’s global network of specialists and consultative approach to recruitment and global mobility comes in. Globally, Brunel has been part of two notable CCS projects in the Netherlands, Aramis and Pothos located at the Massvlakte in the Port of Rotterdam. Brunel supplied an array of highly skilled specialists including engineers, scienties, and project managers, all with expertise in capture technologies. Currently, over 40 Brunel specialists are working on different CCS projects in the Netherlands.

While CCS and CCUS implementation is totally different in Asia, specifically in Indonesia, Brunel’s global institutional knowledge and network can serve as a catalyst for global-to-local skills and knowledge transfer.

Reinforcing this is Brunel’s expertise in global mobility. With offices all around Asia, our global mobility solution ensures that recruitment, deployment, and workforce management are compliant to local laws and regulations. Since the CCS and CCUS sectors are new to Indonesia, it’s fair to hypothesize that initial knowledge will come from expat specialists making global mobility a critical ingredient in timely recruitment and workforce planning.