A large portion of the population in Indonesia lacks access to electrical power, and most of this portion lives in rural areas. No access to electricity strongly limits people’s fundamental needs. Presently, diesel fuel is predominately used to generate electricity in remote areas, at high costs and hindering local communities to receive equitable and reliable access to electricity. Supported by national planning policies and programs, our solution to this problem is to replant and restore areas of degraded land through social forestry programs and use part of the biomass to fuel distributed power generation systems. This power generation system through land restoration not only supports rural livelihoods but also contributes towards several international commitments and agreements such as the Bonn Challenge on forest landscape restoration, the Paris Climate Agreement and several of the Sustainable Development Goals.