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MALAYSIA Tanah Tumpah Darahku

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Monday, August 8, 2022

Adopt EVs for a better Malaysian future

 

What makes the world go round? “Tis love, ‘tis love,” said the Duchess in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.

It used to be steam, in the 1800s, then it was petrol.

In the era of the steam engine in Britain, and what was nicknamed the Red Flag Act, a man bearing a red flag was required to walk ahead of the steam engine contraption that represented the car of those horse cart days.

At present, modern transport and the energy sources that fuel it make the world go round. Tomorrow, electric vehicles (EVs) will make the world go round.

An energy policy that addresses Malaysia’s fuel subsidy bill – forecast by the government to swell to almost RM30 billion or about three times more than the RM11 billion of the previous years – is fiscal prudence for Malaysia’s long-term economic health.

And yet, which politician is willing to sacrifice re-election ambitions to ditch a popular fuel subsidy policy?

It was therefore a huge and pleasant surprise to read that Tenaga Nasional Bhd (TNB), would fast-track its net zero emissions plan, and put in place one of the missing pieces in Malaysia’s energy transition picture.

This is a happy ending to the saga within TNB — the old school who believed EVs would rock the boat for TNB and the new school that wanted to embrace EVs and decarbonisation as a new way to grow revenue sustainably.

In a media briefing, TNB’s president and CEO Bahari Din announced that the power utility would step up the pace towards a more sustainable energy policy.

He said the initiative was part of the national power utility company’s target to accelerate EV adoption to capture the estimated RM1.3 billion of EV market value by 2030.

Baharin added that TNB would invest about RM90 million over three years to support Malaysia’s EV ecosystem.

This included reskilling for the EV industry, electrification of TNB’s own fleet, building charging infrastructure, sponsoring EV-related studies and fostering coalitions such as the Zero Emission Vehicles Association (ZEVA) among EV players.

“The potential positive impact to both climate and the company’s bottomline makes the development of the EV ecosystem a clear priority for TNB,” Bahari said.

This is a huge step forward for the decarbonisation of the transport sector which is said to account for almost 30% of modern-day carbon emissions.

At the media briefing, it was reported that TNB would set up fast EV charging stations at PLUS Highways’ rest stops and along federal roads.

According to an NST report, TNB estimates that there will be some 3,300 charging points set up by it and other EV players to serve 33,350 pure EVs by 2025, generating RM80 million electricity revenue annually.

Transport electrification is a low hanging fruit for TNB. It already has electricity substations at all the R&Rs on the North South Highway.

These substations will have the capacity to supply electricity to the fast chargers (DC chargers) that can typically fill a battery EV from 20% to 80% in 30 minutes.

A North-South Highway with a comprehensive network of a variety of EV chargers every 50km would be a dream network and the first in Asean.

While the EV future for Malaysia is now suddenly brighter, on another note we should consider that 99.9% of vehicles run on fossil fuels.

We should have an energy transition plan, starting with commercial vehicles. This should include natural gas vehicles (NGV).

The Malaysian Association of NGV Installers is currently dormant because the government seems to have forgotten about this relatively low emission fuel.

NGV seems to have contributed to a substantial decarbonisation of India’s cities. Following an Indian Supreme Court judge’s ruling on the rights of citizens to clean air, almost all of New Delhi’s three wheelers now run on NGV.

Other countries such as Argentina, Canada, China, Iran, Italy, Spain, and the US have adopted cleaner fuel in the form of compressed natural gas and liquefied natural gas, in tandem with technological developments that have improved CNG and LNG systems in the auto sector.

And what about ocean thermal energy which has high potential considering that Peninsular Malaysia is surrounded by seas. Greentech Malaysia has been researching and developing ocean thermal energy for more than a decade and the potential is there to produce green hydrogen on a 24/7 basis.

It is one of the renewable energy sources which is continuously available like nuclear energy, says one of Malaysia’s pioneers of ocean thermal energy, Abu Bakar Jaafar.

There is also an initiative in the Automotive Development Centre of Universiti Teknologi Malaysia to convert used battery EVs to hydrogen fuel cells. The test bed is a used Nissan.

We should also recognise that Sarawak is forging ahead into the hydrogen economy, launching Southeast Asia’s first integrated hydrogen production plant and refuelling station in Kuching and introducing Sarawak’s first hydrogen-powered vehicle, a city stage bus, in 2019.

Under the Sarawak green energy agenda, it awarded a tender last year for the local assembly of hydrogen fuel cell buses to service urban public transport routes.

Earlier last week, Sarawak’s deputy energy and environmental sustainability minister Hazland Abang Hipni announced a plan to host an automotive assembly plant to produce hydrogen-powered fuel cell EVs.

He said Sarawak premier Abang Johari Openg would announce the details of the manufacturer, the investment and the production capacity.

He said there are many battery-driven EVs in the market but the origin and source of energy to produce the battery is questionable. “That is why Sarawak is focusing on fuel-cell EVs powered by locally generated green hydrogen,” he said. - FMT

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.

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