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By Shikin Louis
KUALA LUMPUR, June 27: The Sarawak government will hold discussions with the Federal government and client countries on the legal framework to transport carbon dioxide (CO2) across boundaries, says Deputy Minister of Energy and Environmental Sustainability Sarawak (MEESTY) Dr Hazland Abang Hipni.
He said one of the challenges in carbon capture and storage (CCS) is the transportation of CO2 from other countries into Sarawak waters.
He mentioned that Sarawak has been blessed with 1,665 depleted wells whereby it can store the carbon that has been captured either in Singapore, Japan or South Korea.
“The potential storage area is about 9 billion tonnes which is more than Sarawak’s nature-based solutions of about 1 billion tonnes. That is why Sarawak is focusing more on the CCS industry.
“Thus, on the conveyancing part, we need to legislate and we must have proper legal framework to transport CO2 across boundaries.
“We are doing that at the moment and we will be discussing the matter with the Malaysian Foreign Affairs Ministry, Transport Ministry and also the countries involved,” he said when speaking at a parallel session on ‘Politics & Policies: Building Bridges and Removing Barriers’ held in conjunction with the Energy Asia 2023 conference at Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre here today.
Dr Hazland further stressed that Sarawak’s carbon trading is not a fantasy as efforts have already been started by the State government.
This included the amendments to the Sarawak Land Code and Forests Ordinance last year to enable carbon trading as well as carbon capture and storage to be done legally and in a regulated manner.
He also hinted that new laws to regulate hydrogen economy and carbon trading are currently being formulated and would be ready by the end of this year.
At the same time, he mentioned that Kuching, Sarawak will host a hydrogen conference for Asia Pacific in June next year.
“For Sarawak, we are not ‘still planning’ or fantasising. We have already started our carbon trading; we have started our carbon storage with Petroliam Nasional Berhad (Petronas) at Kasawari block; we have started our carbon trading with Singapore.
“And we are now in negotiation with Singapore to sell our power through the undersea cables of about 1,000 megawatts and we have sold our hydroelectric power to Kalimantan (Indonesia) about 300 megawatts, and we are going to sell some more hydropower to Sabah, the Philippines and Brunei.
“We are actually doing it. We are not in the planning stage. We are there already,” he emphasised.
Dr Hazland was one of the speakers for the parallel session alongside Razman Hashim, senior vice president for Group Legal and Group General Counsel of Petronas; Allison Flower, senior energy advisor of International Energy Unit; Abdul Razib Dawood, chief executive officer of Energy Commission; and Tim Rockell, managing director of Energy Strat Asia Pte Ltd, Singapore. — DayakDaily
