Legal Literacy - Amidst uncertain global geopolitical fluctuations, the energy crisis is often responded to with a uniform pattern in various parts of the world, namely a rapid response focused on controlling individual behavior.

When energy commodity prices soar, the public narrative immediately shifts to calls for austerity, reduced mobility, and tightened consumption at the household level. This approach places society as the vanguard and the main target in the crisis mitigation scheme.

Work From Home: A Marginal Solution

The plan to implement a Work From Home (WFH) policy one day a week for state civil apparatus, the private sector, and students in Indonesia in April 2026 is a real manifestation of this pattern. In administrative calculations, this policy is seen as an instrument to keep the state budget deficit below 3% amidst soaring world oil prices that have broken through US$100 per barrel due to tensions in the Strait of Hormuz. The government estimates that savings in fuel consumption could reach 20%.

However, when viewed from a systemic perspective, the effectiveness of this kind of policy tends to be marginal. Although it can reduce the volume of commuters in large cities, the savings are often not significant to total national energy consumption. This policy assumes that work mobility is the main driver of fuel consumption, an assumption that often misses the reality on the ground.

This means that behavior-based policies are an inability to map the economic structure that drives energy consumption. Data shows that the backbone of energy consumption actually lies in the logistics sector, the distribution of goods, and an economic structure that is still highly dependent on large-scale physical mobility.

The problem is not just about individual commuters going to the office, but about how the national supply chain is organized. When policies only target reducing individual travel, the energy "saved" on the highway only shifts to domestic consumption in households, or remains used by industrial and distribution sectors that are not touched by the WFH policy.

The Pitfalls of Reactive Policy

From a public policy perspective, there is a tendency in which energy regulations in Indonesia are more often reactive to short-term symptoms rather than carrying out structural improvements. Normatively, Law Number 30 of 2007 concerning Energy has actually mandated fair and sustainable energy management. However, at the implementation level, this policy is only used as a crisis management tool to defuse fiscal turmoil.

This is evident in the energy subsidy mechanism regulated through various Presidential Regulations. Although the subsidy policy is aimed at underprivileged communities, in reality, there are still loopholes that allow for distribution leaks, namely when upper-middle-class economic groups become the main beneficiaries.

When world oil prices soar, the state tends to issue "emergency" policies such as WFH or mobility restrictions, instead of carrying out bold legal reforms to permanently break dependence on fossil energy. This kind of policy reflects a failure of law in facilitating a substantive energy transition, namely preferring to maintain short-term budget stability rather than long-term energy sovereignty.

Individualization of Responsibility and Shifting of Burden

Conceptually, this phenomenon can be called "individualization of responsibility." The state, in the face of systemic failures or external pressures, tends to shift this burden to the public through narratives of behavioral change. By legitimizing WFH as an energy solution, the state implicitly shifts the responsibility for saving from the upstream sector to the downstream sector (individuals).

These solutions ultimately become symbolic. On paper, this policy seems proactive, but in practice, it obscures the need for more fundamental policy reforms such as energy audits in large industrial sectors or the acceleration of renewable energy infrastructure. As long as energy policy is still trapped in a behavioral response pattern, we will continue to be trapped in the same cycle of crisis every time world oil prices fluctuate.

True reform requires the courage to dissect the more fundamental economic structure and legal policies, not just moving the workspace from the office to home.