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 change into a regional “inexperienced battery,” however its renewable power desires may come at critical environmental price, specialists warn.
Wedged between peninsular Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and the Philippines, Sarawak’s management believes it may change into a keystone in a regional power transition.
Its many rivers and streams supply doubtlessly plentiful hydro-electricity and will someday energy manufacturing of inexperienced hydrogen.
It’s also putting in photo voltaic and touting biomass to develop its renewable capability, with Premier Abang Johari Tun Openg telling traders in Europe final week the state is “dedicated to a low-carbon and sustainable power future”.
However environmental teams warn a lot of this inexperienced power infrastructure contributes to deforestation and the displacement of Indigenous teams.
And for now, Sarawak’s important export is a fossil gas: liquefied pure gasoline.
– Harnessing hydro energy –
Sarawak started producing hydroelectricity a number of a long time in the past, and is at present constructing a fourth hydro-power plant.
They at present account for round 3,500 megawatts — sufficient to gentle about two to a few million Southeast Asian households day by day.
Its first floating photo voltaic area is already producing round 50 megawatts, and greater than a dozen others are deliberate, Chen Shiun, senior vp of Sarawak Power Company, instructed AFP.
With a inhabitants of fewer than three million, the massive potential power surplus is clear, he stated.
By 2030, Sarawak goals to generate round 10,000 megawatts, principally from hydropower, with photo voltaic and pure gasoline contributing.
It desires to provide 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 power transition,” Shabrina Nadhila, an Asia analyst at power think-tank Ember, instructed 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 concerning the APG (ASEAN Energy Grid),” high Malaysian power official Zaidi Mohd Karli instructed AFP.
Already, a 128-kilometre (80-mile) cross-border electrical energy connection is bringing hydropower from Sarawak to neighbouring Indonesia.
The state can be studying from different ASEAN nations resembling Laos, which launched the same hydro-powered plan in February, aiming to change 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 historic tropical rainforests for hydropower development 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, instructed AFP.
“A big a part of that may be attributed to hydropower.”
Greater than 9,000 Indigenous folks had been relocated from Bakun to create space for considered one of Southeast Asia’s largest dams, commissioned in 2011.
Virtually 70,000 hectares — an space concerning the measurement of Singapore — of forest ecosystem was flooded, based on a number of environmental organisations and educational research.
Relocation and compensation points proceed even at this time and there are fears of repeat situations and exclusion of native communities as new hydropower tasks launch elsewhere, environmental teams stated.
“The enlargement of enormous hydropower infrastructure in Sarawak raises necessary environmental and social issues,” Ember’s Nadhila stated.
“To deal with 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 believe it may name itself a ‘inexperienced battery’ for Southeast Asia.”
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