Hopes high for Malaysia's renewable energy sector

Malaysia is seen to have good potential in renewable energy on account of its plentiful resources.

The Malaysian-German Chamber of Commerce and Industry cites such resources as palm oil waste, that can be capitalised to generate biomass energy, in giving such assessment.

The new Feed-in-Tariff system to be introduced next month in Malaysia, will be the tool to emerge very strong in renewable energy,

and it will enable the green industry to grow, said MGCC general manager Thomas Brandt at a media briefing here Wednesday.

The new FIT system is expected to enable consumers and companies to generate renewable energy and sell it back to utility companies and distributors for a fixed number of years and among the current eligible resources for the FIT programme in Malaysia are biomass, biogas, mini-hydro and solar energy.

Brandt said German companies are also interested to partner local palm oil millers as they had the technology to generate electricity from biomass and Malaysia had plenty of resources with a reasonable cost of production.

He also said that local palm oil millers were currently not interested to invest in the sector due to the lower tariff and returns.

However, if the government increases the electricity tariff, currently at 21 sen to 40 sen for a period of 20 years, although the initial investment will be expensive, they would be willing to invest as after six to seven years, they would be able to make good money, he suggested.

The full story is availa ble at bernama.com.