By NNN-Bernama
Kuala Lumpur : Global technology powerhouse General Electric (GE) sees a lot of interest in renewable energy in Asia with high oil prices and concerns about the environment.
Its president for Southeast Asia, Stuart L. Dean, emphasised that while thermal fuel sources like oil, gas and coal will remain dominant for a very long time, the energy market is moving towards increased use of renewables.
“The current high oil prices and concerns about the environment are catalysts for the growth of renewable energy power generation and improving the efficiency of conventional power generation, transmission and distribution,” he told Bernama in an interview recently.
GE’s wind energy business recorded close to US$5 billion in sales last year. That is over 20 percent of total GE Energy sales for 2007.
In Malaysia, GE has a landfill waste-to-energy project in Puchong near here and recently completed a similar deal in Bali, which qualifies for carbon credits under the Kyoto Protocol Clean Development Mechanism.
For the many distant and remote towns in East Malaysia, Dean said, biogas technology can be an effective contributor to distributed power systems.
“For the many large oil palm plantations, biogas technology stands out as a suitable solution to convert agro-waste into energy to power their own operations or to sell electricity back to the grid,” he explained.
According to Dean, demand for power in Malaysia will be moderate in the short term because of the comfortable reserve margin (between generating capacity and demand) and in view of upcoming power plants.
However, he felt there will still be pockets of demand for extra power generation capacity.
In Sabah, for example, the projection is demand for an additional capacity of 200-300 Megawatt.
Beyond power generation, he said, the Malaysian energy market is still continuing to upgrade the transmission and distribution systems as well as power plant efficiency.
These will need additional investment but will potentially provide savings through improved plant performance, less electricity leakage and hence less fuel use, he noted.
While it is imperative to make current power generation systems more efficient and reduce fuel use and emissions, more investment, Dean explained, will have to be allocated for renewable technology as the energy markets move towards greater use of renewables.
He indicated that government incentives will play a key role in supporting the growth of investment in renewable technology.
“Government incentives to invest in renewable technology have driven a lot of renewable energy in Europe and the U.S. We don’t see too many of those incentives in South Eastasia today, and the market is waiting for that,” he said.
GE Energy Financial Services, the investment unit of GE, has announced that it will increase its investment in renewable energy by 50 percent to US$6 billion by 2010.
Its most active investment is in wind energy, which is also its biggest area of investment.