KUALA LUMPUR, March 9 — The Natural Resources, Environment and Climate Change Ministry (NRECC) has allocated an additional 630-Megawatt (MW) quota for the development of power generation projects from renewable energy (RE) resources, said its minister Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad.
He said the quota, which would be made available by this year, is an immediate measure to accelerate the deployment of RE and boost the growth of the RE industry in the country.
“This includes 180MW for the development of small hydro, biogas, and biomass projects under the Feed-in Tariff scheme to diversify the sources of power generation from renewables and 200MW for the Corporate Green Power Programme to enable more environmental, social and governance (ESG)-conscious businesses the options to procure green electricity.
“Also included, 200MW for the Net Energy Metering (NEM) Net Offset Virtual Aggregation (NOVA) programme to encourage the utilisation of rooftops for power generation among commercial and industry consumers, as well as 50MW for the NEM Rakyat programme to encourage adoption of solar rooftops among domestic consumers,” he said.
He said this in his speech during the launch of the Malaysia Energy Transition Outlook (Meto), here today which was also attended by International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena )Director-General Francesco La Camera and Deputy NRECC Minister Datuk Seri Huang Tiong Sii.
Nik Nazmi also encouraged all stakeholders to invest more in RE and energy efficiency to remain in touch and ahead of global climate and sustainability-conscious trends.
He said this would create economic opportunities for the country and help in remaining competitive even in challenging global economic scenarios.
“Malaysia has made reasonable progress in transitioning its energy sector to a lower carbon system, but there is still much work to be done to reduce fossil fuel reliance.
“It has been estimated that Vietnam has a 34 per cent share among Asean nations in the RE sector, Thailand (17 per cent), Indonesia (13 per cent) and Malaysia (10 per cent), so we can and must do better,” he added.
On today’s programme, Meto, a combined effort between Irena and NRECC, serves as a reference for energy industry players in making informed decisions towards a sustainable energy future in crafting Malaysia’s pathway towards a lower carbon energy system.
— Bernama
