Figure 19: Natural gas resources and consumption by region, 2013

Figure 19: Natural Gas Resources and Consumption by Region, 2013

Renewable Energy in Malaysia

The less than 10 MW grid-connected Small Renewable Energy Project (SREP) scheme that was implemented in the 8th Malaysia Plan (2001-2005) to fulfil the 5% target share of RE in the Five Fuel Policy was off-target because only two SREP projects utilising oil palm biomass (10MW) and landfill biogas (2MW) were successfully built and operated. The target of 5% of RE was revised to 350MW in the 9th Malaysia Plan where 245MW is from biomass (Oil palm 193MW, municipal solid waste (MSW) 35MW, land fill gas (LFG) 7MW, and rice husk 10MW) and 105MW from minihydro.

RE contribution to electricity generation was only 12 MW in 2005. The 9th Malaysia Plan’s target of 300 MW in Peninsular Malaysia and 50 MW in Sabah was not met, as only 41.5 MW was contributed by the end of the year. In the 10th Malaysia Plan, a new RE target was set at 985 MW by 2015, which is 5.5% of the total mix for Malaysia (Economic Planning Unit 2001, 2006, 2011). The BioGen funded by UNIDO-GEF in the 8th and 9th Malaysia Plans (2001- 2010) had successfully built two full-scale demonstration models: a 10MW biogas from POME power plant and a 13 MW biomass from the EFB power plant. The MBIPV funded by UNIDO-GEF in the 9th Malaysia Plan (2005 – 2011) had increased the utilisation of BIPV up to 1.5 MWp.

In the FiT programme administered by SEDA, only 421 MW out of the approved 1349 MW of RE had achieved commercial operation by 2016 (Figure 20). All of the projects except for solar PV (individual) were scaled up from SREP. Only 30% of the approved FiT project reached commercial operation. Solar PV was commercialised very quickly but biomass, biogas and small hydro were very slow to commercialised (Figure 21).

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