Malaysia’s largest island state goals to be area’s ‘inexperienced battery’
By Jan HENNOP
Kuching, Malaysia (AFP) Sept 15, 2025
Malaysia’s verdant, river-crossed state of Sarawak is charging forward with plans to grow to be a regional “inexperienced battery,” however its renewable vitality goals might come at critical environmental price, specialists warn.
Wedged between peninsular Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and the Philippines, Sarawak’s management believes it might grow to be a keystone in a regional vitality transition.
Its many rivers and streams supply doubtlessly plentiful hydro-electricity and will sooner or later energy manufacturing of inexperienced hydrogen.
It is usually putting in photo voltaic and touting biomass to develop its renewable capability, with Premier Abang Johari Tun Openg telling buyers in Europe final week the state is “dedicated to a low-carbon and sustainable vitality future”.
However environmental teams warn a lot of this inexperienced vitality infrastructure contributes to deforestation and the displacement of Indigenous teams.
And for now, Sarawak’s important export is a fossil gasoline: liquefied pure fuel.
– Harnessing hydro energy –
Sarawak started producing hydroelectricity a number of a long time in the past, and is presently constructing a fourth hydro-power plant.
They presently account for round 3,500 megawatts — sufficient to gentle about two to 3 million Southeast Asian households each day.
Its first floating photo voltaic discipline is already producing round 50 megawatts, and greater than a dozen others are deliberate, Chen Shiun, senior vp of Sarawak Power Company, advised AFP.
With a inhabitants of fewer than three million, the large potential vitality surplus is apparent, he mentioned.
By 2030, Sarawak goals to generate round 10,000 megawatts, principally from hydropower, with photo voltaic and pure fuel contributing.
It desires to produce neighbouring Sabah state and Brunei, and doubtlessly mainland Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines.
The state’s ambitions are “daring and promising,” and ship “a robust sign for accelerating the area’s vitality transition,” Shabrina Nadhila, an Asia analyst at vitality think-tank Ember, advised AFP.
– ‘Good instance’ –
Southeast Asia’s energy calls for have greater than doubled within the final decade, and can solely develop additional because the increasing center class installs air con and energy-hungry knowledge centres emerge.
Kuala Lumpur is hoping the rising demand will re-energise a long-mooted electrical energy grid connecting members of the 10-country Affiliation of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
“Sarawak is an effective instance that we are able to study from, particularly once we speak in regards to the APG (ASEAN Energy Grid),” high Malaysian vitality official Zaidi Mohd Karli advised AFP.
Already, a 128-kilometre (80-mile) cross-border electrical energy connection is bringing hydropower from Sarawak to neighbouring Indonesia.
The state can also be studying from different ASEAN nations resembling Laos, which launched the same hydro-powered plan in February, aiming to alternate round 1,500 megawatts of electrical energy with China by subsequent yr.
– Environmental fears –
However the state’s grand aspirations stay dogged by environmental issues over the destruction of historical tropical rainforests for hydropower building and timber logging.
“Though Sarawak has the bottom emissions grade issue by far of any state in Malaysia, it additionally has the most important fee of deforestation,” Adam Farhan, of environmental watchdog RimbaWatch, advised AFP.
“A big a part of that may be attributed to hydropower.”
Greater than 9,000 Indigenous folks have been relocated from Bakun to create space for certainly one of Southeast Asia’s largest dams, commissioned in 2011.
Nearly 70,000 hectares — an space in regards to the measurement of Singapore — of forest ecosystem was flooded, in keeping with a number of environmental organisations and tutorial research.
Relocation and compensation points proceed even right this moment and there are fears of repeat situations and exclusion of native communities as new hydropower tasks launch elsewhere, environmental teams mentioned.
“The enlargement of enormous hydropower infrastructure in Sarawak raises necessary environmental and social issues,” Ember’s Nadhila mentioned.
“To handle these challenges, it’s essential to implement strict and complete environmental and social safeguards,” she warned.
Farhan from RimbaWatch added: “Sarawak must do much more to kind out its Indigenous rights points and its deforestation points earlier than I feel it might name itself a ‘inexperienced battery’ for Southeast Asia.”
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