MALAYSIA’S energy choices may become a critical issue for investors quite soon, as seen from recent signals by the world’s largest investment groups.
Early this year, BlackRock the world’s biggest asset manager, controlling more than US$7.3 trillion in investments joined Climate Action 100+, a group of investors putting pressure on the worst polluters to change their ways.
The issue has high stakes for Malaysia as it plans the next phase of its energy policy, according to the Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (Ideas) in a recent research paper, “The Future of Malaysia’s Energy Mix”.
As a share of the country’s electrical energy generation, coal supplied 46% of the 150,442 GWh (gigawatt hours) produced in 2016, say the authors of the paper, Prof Renato Lima-de-Oliveira and Mathias Stroh Varming, quoting the Energy Commission. “This high use of coal, despite domestically available natural gas and commitments to increase renewables, presents a paradox a