MGA recognises natural gas as the perfect partner to renewable energy

KUALA LUMPUR (Sept 17): Malaysian Gas Association (MGA), the nation’s lead advocate for the natural gas industry, recognises natural gas as the perfect partner to renewable energy (RE), playing a vital role in driving RE growth in Malaysia.

This is in line with the recognition by the International Gas Union (IGU) which identifies that natural gas enables clean energies as it supports variable renewable generation, enables broader use of biogas and facilitates power to gas.

“Natural gas is the necessary tool for addressing the most pressing global energy challenges and will have a vital role in the sustainable energy future of the Asian region,” said the president of MGA during his presentation at PowerGen Asia 2019 in Kuala Lumpur recently.

PowerGen Asia is the largest annual conference and exhibition for power generation in the South East Asia region.

“Reaching a sustainable and secure energy future will require a range of tools to ensure resiliency. Natural gas fired power generation will continue to play a central role as the most flexible generation with its inherent capability to respond quickly to the intermittency of variable renewable energy.

In addition to its traditional role generating electricity as centralised utility, gas fired power generation is playing more significant future role as distributed power generation through cogeneration application, said Hazli Sham.

Hazli Sham concluded his presentation by calling for a policy to include cost of externalities when considering the true cost of electricity generation.

“Air pollution has high economic and societal costs, which need to be priced explicitly or through regulation. According to a case study performed in the Philippines, by including cost of carbon and associated cost on health impact, the cost of electricity generated from natural gas is at least 20% lower when compared to coal,” he added.

Ministry of Energy, Science, Technology, Environment and Climate Change, through its 2019 Initiatives, strives to achieve 20% renewable energy capacity mix by 2025.

With most of the RE capacity expected to comprise variable renewable energy, in particular solar photo-voltaic, flexible base-load power generation plays an important role to ensure stable and sustainable supply of electricity to consumers.