KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia is on track to achieve its goal of carbon neutrality by 2050, albeit funding is needed to upgrade the current domestic infrastructure to attract foreign investors, according to Energy Industries Council (EIC) Asia Pacific regional director Azman Nasir.
“Malaysia can achieve its net zero carbon emission by 2050, but it depends on what else we are going to do,” he told reporters at the Oil and Gas Asia 2023 (OGA) event today.
Touching on energy transition, he noted that Malaysia ranks number one in Southeast Asia in the Energy Transition Index recently by the World Economic Forum.
Recently, the government published the National Energy Transition Roadmap (NETR) Part One, to effectively manage energy transition. Azman pointed out that the NETR has “detailed action plans” and eagerly awaits the next part of the roadmap.
However, he said that Malaysia needs to keep up the momentum and pointed out that funding to upgrade domestic infrastructure is important and needed to attract investors.
“We need the external funding, foreign funding to do this. We must make renewable projects or energy transition projects attractive for the actual funds to come in,” he added.
He said that investors are concerned in terms of return on their investments, as well as investment risk assessment for renewable and energy transition projects, which he noted is dependent on readily available facilities such as infrastructure, manpower, costs and technology.
“If there is no (well-developed) infrastructure, then investors will think twice about whether to come here, since there are many options such as Vietnam or Thailand or elsewhere,” he said.
Meanwhile, the OGA and EIC co-located events is expected to generate close to RM200 million in potential negotiated sales with 25,000 attendees from 52 countries and 2,000 exhibitors.
