Abstract
Malaysia is a net importer of coal, petroleum products and piped natural gas. Moreover, its primary energy supply is dominated by fossil fuels, at about 93% in total, with coal and natural gas constituting the highest shares in electricity generation. Thus, there is need for Malaysia to take swift action in transitioning to a high renewable energy system for long-term sustainability and meeting its climate action commitment under the Paris Agreement. A net-zero emissions vision guided by a roadmap may effectively motivate and catalyse carbon-free energy deployments. In this paper, we revisit the carbon-free energy roadmap that was developed in 2015 and compare it with the current generation development plan to identify the gaps between them. We argue that the roadmap is still relevant to the net-zero emissions vision; however, we have also identified gaps that merit further research and improvement. The identified gaps mainly relate to more recent data, along with technology and policy developments. Accordingly, we put forward potential research suggestions to bridge these gaps for future development of a roadmap that would assist Malaysia in shaping a long-term plan towards realizing a high renewable net-zero power generation system.This article is part of the theme issue ‘Developing resilient energy systems’.
Highlights
Malaysia is one of the world’s largest oil and gas (O&G) producers, ranked 26th and 13th, respectively [1]; in 2020, mining and quarrying of O&G contributed about 6.8% of its gross domestic product (GDP) [2]
Malaysia has been a net importer of petroleum products and piped natural gas since 2010 and 2005, respectively [3], and coal demand has been increasing, with net imports annually growing by about 9.3% on average since 2015
The power sector is Malaysia’s largest consumer of natural gas and coal; in 2018, its primary energy supply was dominated by fossil fuels, at about 93% in total, with O&G individually accounting for 71%, coal for 22% and renewables for 7% [3]
Summary
Malaysia is one of the world’s largest oil and gas (O&G) producers, ranked 26th and 13th, respectively [1]; in 2020, mining and quarrying of O&G contributed about 6.8% of its gross domestic product (GDP) [2]. The taskforce developed the second scenario, which defined carbon-free energy as having net-zero CO2 emissions in electricity generation and so narrowed the scope from the TPES to electricity generation Did this scenario set a more achievable goal, and, based on the most recent GHG inventory [7], electricity generation constitutes the major CO2 emissions source in Malaysia. The desired goal usually takes a long-term perspective of 20–25 years, long enough to allow considerable scope for deliberate choice [15,17,18,20] All these factors support use of the backcasting approach for the ACF Roadmap and frame the needs of that roadmap in realizing the aspirational net-zero vision. For the net-zero emissions roadmap, forecasting can assist in providing an optimized short-term scenario Such integration would complement the action plans suggested by backcasting in achieving the desired long-term goal
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