The largest island state of Malaysia wants to be the ‘green battery’ of the region
The green, river-crossed state of Sarawak, the Malaysia, is calculating plans to become a regional ‘green battery’, but the dreams of renewable energy enforcement can come to serious environmental costs, warn experts.
Sarawak’s leadership is clamped between the Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and Philippines peninsula and believes that it can become a keystone in a regional energy transition.
The many rivers and streams offer potentially abundant hydroelectricity and can one day the electricity production of green hydrogen.
It is also the installation of solar and biomass to grow his renewable capacity, with Prime Minister Abang Johari Tun open that investors in Europe last week tells that the state is “committed to a low -carbon and sustainable future”.
But environmental groups warn a lot of this green energy infrastructure contributes to deforestation and the relocation of indigenous groups.
And for now, the most important export of Sarawak is a fossil fuel: liquid natural gas.
– Use of Hydro – Power –
Sarawak started to generate hydroelectricity a few decades ago and is currently building a fourth hydroelectric power plant.
They are currently good for around 3,500 megawatts – enough to light about two to three million Southeast Asian households every day.
The first floating tanning field already produces around 50 megawatts, and more than a dozen others are planned, Chen Shiun, Senior Vice President of Sarawak Energy Corporation, AFP said.
With a population of less than three million, the enormous potential energy surplus is clear, he said.
By 2030, Sarawak wants to generate around 10,000 megawatts, usually from hydropower, with solar energy and natural gas that contributes.
It wants to deliver the neighboring Sabah State and Brunei, and possibly mainland Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines.
The ambitions of the state are “fat and promising” and steer “a strong signal for accelerating the energy transition of the region,” Sorbrina Nadhila, an Asian analyst at Energy Think-tank Ember, told AFP.
– ‘good example’ –
The electricity requirements of Southeast Asia have more than doubled in the last decade and will only grow as the growing middle class air conditioning and energy-hungry data centers appear.
Kuala Lumpur hopes that the growing demand will connect a long-being-open electricity grid that will connect members of the 10-countries Association of Southeast Asian countries (ASEAN).
“Sarawak is a good example we can learn from, especially when we talk about the APG (Asean Power Grid),” Top Malaysian energy officer Zaidi Mohd Karli told AFP.
A 128 kilometer (80-mile) cross-border electricity connection already takes itself from the hydropower of Sarawak to neighboring Indonesia.
The State also learns from other ASEAN countries such as Laos, which launched a similar hydroelorer plan in February, aimed at exchanging around 1500 megawatt electricity with China by next year.
– Milieu -Ars –
But the great ambitions of the state remain chased by environmental problems about the destruction of old tropical rain forests for hydropower construction and logging.
“Although Sarawak has the lowest factor for emission quality by far from every state in Malaysia, it also has the largest number of deforestation,” Adam Farhan, of environmental watchdog Rimbawatch, told AFP.
“A large part of it can be attributed to hydropower.”
More than 9,000 indigenous people were moved from Bakun to make room for one of the largest dams in Southeast Asia, commissioned by 2011.
Almost 70,000 hectares – an area of the size of Singapore – of the Bosecosystem was flooded, according to various environmental organizations and academic studies.
Relocation and compensation problems will continue even today and there are fear of repeat scenarios and exclusion from local communities as new hydropower projects launch elsewhere, said environmental groups.
“The expansion of large hydropower infrastructure in Sarawak evokes important environmental and social care,” said Nadhila van Ember.
“To meet these challenges, it is crucial to enforce strict and extensive environmental and social guarantees,” she warned.
Farhan van RimbaWatch added: “Sarawak has to do much more to solve his indigenous law problems and his deforestation problems before I think it could call itself a ‘green battery’ for Southeast Asia.”
