Govt urged to wind down on coal under new policy

November 2, 2020

Dateline 2020-10-02, Malaysian Reserve:

THE Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (IDEAS) stated that Malaysia’s energy policy should seek to replace coal-based power generation with gas and turbo-charged renewable in order to meet pledges to curb climate change.

IDEAS senior fellow Dr Renato Lima de Oliveira (picture) said replacing coal with gas is a low hanging fruit as Malaysia plans its next energy policy.

“Beyond that, Malaysia needs to pivot its strengths in oil and gas (O&G) into renewable and reform the energy framework to further promote the use of renewable,” he said in a statement yesterday on the think tank’s latest report titled “The Future of Malaysia’s Energy Mix”. The paper is co-authored by Mathias Varming.

Lima de Oliveira said Malaysia has made good progress towards reducing emissions and increasing the share of renewable in the country’s energy mix over the last few years. However, the country needs more ambitious policies to meet its reduced carbon commitment under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Paris 2015.


Push for O&G firms to diversify

December 30, 2018

Dateline 2018-11-09, The Edge:

There may be no chance for Malaysian oil & gas (O&G) firms to rest on their laurels given the anticipated demand preference policy activism towards green energy and renewables, which will eventually result in lower fossil fuel consumption.

“There is a lot of debate about how to fuel the future moving forward,” said Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (IDEAS) senior fellow Professor Renato Lima de Oliveira.

“However, renewables have shown impressive gains in competitiveness in recent years, and in some cases, the cheapest sources for electricity generation.