- A social enterprise initiative to equip traditional fishing boats in east Bali with battery-powered engines has shown some encouraging responses among the trial cohort.
- More than 90% of the world’s 40 million fishers are small-scale operations working from small boats, which policymakers say are better suited to adopt electric vehicles compared with larger vessels.
- Azura Indonesia, the company manufacturing electric maritime engines, hopes new charging infrastructure will help overcome commonly cited challenges, including the need for inexpensive, frequent charging required by traditional fishers.
- The electric vehicle trial in Kusamba village was conducted under the Bali Net Zero Emissions Coalition’s energy transition work on the island of 4.5 million.
KLUNGKUNG, Indonesia — Many of the fishing boats here in Kusamba village leave behind the black sand in near silence as each jukung motors away from Bali’s east coast.
“We’re on — it’s just not that loud,” boat captain Nengah Sudiarta told Mongabay Indonesia, his hand guiding the electric vehicle out from the Kusamba shoreline.
Like many of the millions of fishers in the world’s largest archipelagic country, Sudiarta faces a growing array of challenges practicing a livelihood that sustained previous generations of households.
Research shows overfishing, competition with larger vessels and unfolding impacts of climate change, from ocean acidification to a rise in harmful algal blooms, are reducing catches available to near-shore fishers.
Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine in 2022 sent international fuel costs soaring, prompting Indonesia to raise prices for subsidized diesel by a third that year, directly impacting millions of fishers like Sudiarta.
Indonesia’s forecaster, the BMKG, warned of an intensified rainy season from November until April 2026 after 18 people were killed in Bali following extreme rainfall on Sept. 9 and 10.
Local captains here told Mongabay they were unable to fish for around four months this year owing to poor weather, with anecdotal testimony in many Indonesian fishing villages describing erratic seasons and disrupted trade.
On a recent trip, Sudiarta sold 22 kilograms (48.5 pounds) of tuna for 400,000 rupiah (about $24). However, that included a 150,000 rupiah ($9) fuel bill, requiring him to keep back a large share of his earnings to buy fuel for the next trip.
Set against these headwinds, a pilot program run by a small social enterprise hopes to cut costs incurred by fishers like Sudiarta while tackling emissions and pollution in the traditional sector.
All jukung aside
Sudiarta was among the 78 jukung boat owners in Kusamba to receive nine pooled electric engines from Azura Indonesia, a social enterprise working to foster energy transition in the traditional fisheries sector.
“For us, the energy transition can start with communities like fishers,” said Nadea Nabilla , the co-founder of Azura Indonesia. “We believe technology is truly beneficial when it can be used directly by the people living alongside nature.”
In 2018, Azura began work on a prototype electric engine, before trialing the battery-powered motor with fishers a year later.
The 2 kW battery running 72 volts can propel Sudiarta’s boat forward up to 6 knots (11 kilometers per hour or 6.9 miles per hour), which is approximately the level of performance fishers here expect from a 5-horsepower outrigger running on diesel.
A 2024 report for the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, a U.N. department supporting low- and middle-income countries, noted traditional fishers were best placed to adopt electric boats, though upfront battery costs and weight remained obstacles.
Suitability of the community sector reflects the reduced energy requirements and typically shorter fishing trips of smaller boats, compared with industry-scale outfits, fisheries specialists say.
Small-scale fisheries, however, account for more than 90% of the employment among the global fishing and processing fleet of 40 million.
A study of fuel use and greenhouse emissions published in 2018 concluded global fisheries accounted for 40 billion liters (10.6 billion gallons, about the size of 16,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools) of fuel use in 2011, which generated 179 million metric tons of CO2-equivalent greenhouse gases. That represented around half a percent of global emissions.
Separately, inefficient diesel engines also introduce direct and concentrated contamination to oceans — with known carcinogens, volatile organic compounds and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which bioaccumulate in marine life and pose diffuse public health risks.
Ocean current
Captains in Bali were equipped with three 20 amp-hour lithium batteries, which enable the boat’s motor to operate for three hours before needing to return to land to charge the flat battery.
The addition of three lithium batteries adds bulk on board, with each battery around the size of a shoebox and weighing 8 kg (17.6 lbs).
“Due to the low energy density of batteries compared to fossil fuels, frequent charging is needed, which is complicated by the irregular operational pattern of fishing vessels,” concluded a study published in 2023 in the Journal of Cleaner Production.
However, interviewees in East Bali indicated EV adoption supported by charging infrastructure could one day redefine terms of trade for fishers, an outcome that proponents have long promised.
Fishers here would typically spend up to 10 times the price on subsidized diesel, compared with the current cost of 10,000 rupiah ($0.60) on electricity to charge the batteries.
Azura Indonesia says its electric engine improves affordability by 70%, in addition to an almost 80% reduction in carbon footprint.
Ketut Suartika, the head of a cooperative in Kusamba village, said plans were under discussion to build charging infrastructure in the village port.
That touches on a problem that harbormasters around the world will face amid greater adoption of electric vehicles at sea.
A 2022 report on prospects for electrifying the U.K. fishing fleet by the University of Hull and the National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations, an advocacy group in the U.K., concluded that “a small scale fishing fleet charging overnight would require orders of magnitude more power than most harbours have available at the moment.”
Azura Indonesia’s Fachry Ahmad said the company had considered adding solar panels to the battery and motor given to the Kusamba fishers. However, the company opted instead for a simple system to trim additional weight and lower the probability of component failure.
The Azura Indonesia EV trial is part of the Bali Net Zero Emissions Coalition’s decarbonization efforts, a collaboration by several nonprofits convened by the World Resources Institute’s Indonesia office.
The provincial government of Bali, an island of 4.5 million and one of the world’s most overcrowded tourism locations, has pledged to reach net zero by 2045.
At first, Sudiarta felt hesitant that a shift to an electric vehicle might introduce new risks if he needed to race to safety from gathering storm clouds. He feared relying on batteries at sea during a squall. Other fishers shared similar concerns about short circuits, he said.
“I’m a fisher and I’ve had my boat capsize,” he said. “But I’m still afraid of being alone out in the middle of a big swell.”
Banner image: A traditional fisher in Bali, 2013. Image by Tiomax80 via Flickr (CC BY 2.0).
This story was first published here in Indonesian on Aug. 31, 2025.
Citation:
Parker, R.W.R., Blanchard, J.L., Gardner, C. et al. Fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions of world fisheries. Nature Clim Change 8, 333–337 (2018). doi:10.1038/s41558-018-0117-x
Koričan, M., Frković, L., & Vladimir, N. (2023). Electrification of fishing vessels and their integration into isolated energy systems with a high share of renewables. Journal of Cleaner Production, 425, 138997. doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2023.138997
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