80 PER CENT HYDRO POWER BY 2020

SIGNING.... Taib signing the plaque at one of the booths he toured yesterday.

By : JOHNSON K SAAI

KUCHING: Hydro electricity is projected to account for 80 per cent of the power generated in the state by 2020. This would reduce the state’s dependence on gas to generate power from the present 50 per cent to only five per cent.

In revealing this projection, Chief Minister Pehin Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud said this was in line with the state’s desire to ensure the future generation would enjoy a cleaner environment and a better world.

“At the moment our energy generation depends 50 per cent on gas, hydro 35 per cent in the last two years and the other 15 per cent coal fired and till 2020 coal component will remain at 15 per cent but gas will go down to five per cent while hydro will generate 80 per cent of the state’s energy supply,” he said.

He said this in his keynote address at the opening of the International Energy Week 2012 (IEW 2012) at Borneo Convention Centre Kuching (BCCK) here yesterday.

“This is the transition we are going to make within the next 20 years. This means much cleaner energy and much more renewable in nature,” he said.

He said that Sarawak was lucky to achieve that condition while it tried to shift its development from agro based to that of energy intensive.

He added that the development of renewable energy was timely in view of the ever increasing price of petrol without any indication that the trend would stop.

“I do believe that every country that wants to have a healthy sustainable growth will try to see whether they can contain the growth of the consumption of petrol and in Asia only Japan is able to show a remarkable success in this context.

“We are still struggling to do so and we hope we can do it within one generation.”

He also pointed out that cheap renewable energy would be vital in the state’s quest to achieve fully industrialised status by 2030 because investors were no longer looking for cheap manpower but more at energy lower cost.

Taib said the state was very fortunate that it was not only in the position to supply competitive cost of electricity to energy intensive industries but also because the state occupied a strategic place between the supplier of raw materials, like manganese bauxites in the south in Australia and South Africa and the biggest consumers of final materials like aluminium and other glass based products in the north like China, India or the rest of Asia.

“Because of these factors we believe that we will be successful in playing the role of the middleman in the chain of supply. So far we have been able to attract 13 to 14 industries with a total investment of about RM26 to RM27 billion in about two to three years.

“Those are only the energy intensive industries in Samalaju and one in Mukah. Another component of SCORE was the halal-hub which is entirely different from what we are doing in Samalaju,” he noted. (BP)