Tenaga Nasional Berhad plans to step up its investments by nearly six-fold between 2025 and 2030 to prepare for its future energy transition.
TNB’s allocated ET funds for 2018-2024 stands at RM6 billion, from a total of RM45 billion allocated for the domestic grid.
The group plans to invest about RM90 billion within five years on the national grid, of which RM35 billion will be spent on ET-related investments, while the remaining RM54 billion will be used for non-ET ventures.
President and chief executive officer Datuk Baharin Din said TNB is keen to expedite its investments in the grid to avoid current bottlenecks in mature markets, which could delay the scaling-up of renewables as connection queues for wind and solar projects grow to record sizes.
“Bottlenecks can be observed across the United Kingdom, Europe, and even the United States as grid connection queues for wind and solar projects range between a staggering 50 and 200 gigawatts.
“Therefore, in Malaysia, we want to make sure we build green infrastructure early on to avoid any bottlenecks in the adoption of renewable energy,” he said at a session at the Asean Energy Business Forum (AEBF) 2023 in Nusa Dua.
The session was titled “Asean Power Grid (APG) Interconnection: Stepping Up Asean Efforts For Advancing Regional Interconnectivity Through Realising Investment Potentials”.
Baharin highlighted the importance of regional interconnection as it is becoming increasingly clear no country can reach its net zero carbon emission targets alone.
He said as Asean transitions towards net zero, electricity demand is expected to see growth of nearly three times in Malaysia and five times in the region by 2050. This demand is expected to be served by clean energy.
As there is an urgent need to work together to optimise resources in Asean while balancing the trilemma, Bahrain said TNB has put a lot of effort into strengthening ties with regional neighbours in hope of accelerating efforts under the APG.
“Interconnection amongst Asean members opens up a gateway to new investments with a projected market size of more than US$6.3 trillion (RM29.3 trillion) from 2018 to 2050.”
TNB will be signing memoranda of understanding with Indonesia’s State Electric Company PT PLN, Singapore’s SP Group, and Asean Centre for Energy (ACE) today to explore cross-border interconnection between the countries.
TNB also has ongoing collaborations with the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand, Electricite du Laos, and Vietnam Electricity to expedite the development of the interconnection infrastructure while exploring new renewable energy investment opportunities.
AEBF is an official Asean conference and exhibition on energy that brings together high-level regional and international policymakers and key business players.
It is organised in conjunction with the annual Asean Ministers on Energy Meeting.
