Malaysia’s target of being Carbon-Neutral country by 2050 is being taken seriously by corporations, the country’s biggest oil & gas producer, PETRONAS has consciously embarked on a the journey with its own agenda of reaching this goal.
The latest efforts, is its initiative to deploy solar energy at the group’s assets across Malaysia to increase energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions. “The deployment of solar energy at our assets forms part of our journey towards Net Zero Carbon Emission 2050. While we have an active role in powering businesses with clean energy, we are cognisant that the transformative effort should also start at our home ground,” said PETRONAS Head of New Energy, Dr Jay Mariyappan.
To move this ahead, Petronas will be using its own M+ solar solution for the installations, where it will integrate with the systems and products that the company has provided for its customers across the world. This would then power the assets with renewable supply of solar energy for decades to come, whilst optimising performance using the company’s Hawk A.I Data Monitoring System.
As part of this initiative, four Petronas assets will be installed with ground-mounted and rooftop solar systems by this year. Upon completion, the solar systems will see a combined capacity of over 66MWp installed and will help PETRONAS achieve reductions of 58,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per annum.
This effort includes the completed 8.33MWp solar rooftop installation at Malaysia Marine and Heavy Engineering Holdings Berhad (MHB)’s yard in Pasir Gudang, Johor, namely MMHE West, which is the largest of such installation in a single compound in Malaysia, as well as a 7.3MWp solar rooftop installation at Universiti Teknologi Petronas in Seri Iskandar, Perak, which is on-track for completion by end of 2021.
The remaining two projects in the pipeline include a 49.0MWp ground-mounted and rooftop solar installation at Pengerang Integrated Complex in Johor, which is targeted for completion in Q1 2022, as well as a 1.4MWp solar rooftop installation at Institut Teknologi Petroleum PETRONAS (INSTEP) in Terengganu. The installation at INSTEP will also see an additional 5kWP solar training system installed to provide students with hands-on experiential learning in addition to the renewable energy modules and products the institute offers.
The combined installed capacity at the four assets, for scale, can generate enough energy to power more than 20,000 households.
Moving forward, PETRONAS continues to assess the energy consumption of its assets and the Group’s portfolio to identify opportunities for electrifying processes and maximising renewable energy use as part of a phased approach towards achieving NZCE 2050.
