Abstract
Malaysia envisages becoming a developed nation by 2020. To sustain industrial expansion and attract investments Malaysia must introduce new energy strategies. These strategies should also moderate carbon footprint. The new energy strategies introduced by the government are (i) installation of nuclear power plant by 2021, (ii) import of Sarawak hydropower from 2015 and (iii) enhancement of use of renewable energy from 2015. In this paper we analyze the cost and resulting carbon footprint of energy expansion for 12 energy scenes (inclusive of new strategies) to produce electricity for Peninsular Malaysia for the period 2009–2030. We use a computer model MESSAGE to provide optimization. The best strategy is for the following accumulated percentage of energy resource in the fuel mix: 49.3% (natural gas), 28.4% (coal), 4.06% (nuclear), 2.98% (hydropower), 4.45% (renewable), 10.82% (import hydropower). The minimum cost of expanding this strategy from 2009 until 2030 is USD6.090B. The CO2 emission index of this strategy is 0.329t/MWh. The accumulated carbon dioxide emission for this period is 1825.96MtonCO2eq.
•We analyzed the cost of energy expansion and resulting carbon emission using software MESSAGE.•We studied the energy situation for the next 20 years beginning 2009 for Peninsular Malaysia.•We maintained the present energy resources of natural gas, coal and internal hydropower.•We included nuclear, hydropower import and renewable energy as new strategies.