Green is the word for Sabah

KOTA KINABALU: Sabah is “going green” on a large scale with long-term strategies to achieve sustainable and cost-effective measures to meet the state’s power demands.

Chief Minister Datuk Seri Musa Aman said the state government hoped to attract more investors in the renewable energy sector and be a notable destination for biomass, mini hydro, geothermal, micro-algae, tidal and other investments.

He said the move to seek renewable energy was more cost efficient in the long-run as compared to generating electricity from fossil fuels.

Musa said it was a big challenge to promote renewable energy for the state with the need for more precise research as well as investments from the private sector to develop the green energy sector.

“We are committed to promoting renewable energy and will provide the necessary long-term, transparent and stable policy guidelines and regulatory systems with the right condition for investment, such as sufficient infrastructure, incentives as well as technical and financial assistance for the private sector,” he said.

“The private sector should play its part, as there are an abundance of natural resources in the state that can be turned into renewable energy.

“This is the right time to come in and seriously look into opportunities available in the renewable energy sector,” he added when launching the Sustainable Green Energy for a Greener Sabah programme by the Institute for Development Studies (Sabah) with German foundation Konrad-Adenauer- Stiftung.

“The state government has already made a firm decision that coal should not be in the mix, and we stand firm on this,” he said, adding that renewable energy was in great demand around the world and would edge out natural gas as the second biggest source of electricity after coal by 2016.

Musa said the need to switch to renewal energy sources was necessary as the current generation capacity in Sabah was ageing, expensive and becoming increasingly unreliable.

“Unplanned outages have led to costly service interruptions throughout Sabah, especially in the east coast, which is dependent on diesel plants at the moment.

“In some remote areas, electricity grid extensions are often not economical,” he said, adding that the Federal Government had allocated RM1.8bil in grants to put in place transmission links across the state.