KUALA LUMPUR (July 6): Shell Malaysia is aiming to move into the renewable energy industry in the future, said its chairman Ivan Tan.

“Shell globally eased into that space with that business model, [and] we have companies in the US and Singapore that already do large-scale solar power generation and they have done that.

“I guess for Shell Malaysia, we will continue to look into opportunities there (in renewable energy) in the future,” said Tan, without providing a particular timeline, at a virtual briefing after Shell Malaysia’s launch of "The Tree, The Sky, The Sun: A Pathway Towards Malaysia’s Carbon-Neutral Future”.

With the launch of the publication, Shell Malaysia hopes to contribute to the national conversation about the country’s energy transition, which is in line with the global ambition embodied in Shell’s Powering Progress strategy to become a net-zero emission energy business by 2050.

According to Tan, renewable sources of energy will dominate a deeply electrified energy system in the future. Therefore, he said, strong collaboration across the government, businesses and society will be crucial to make progress at the pace required for Malaysia’s energy system to be carbon-neutral by 2065.

“Gains in energy efficiency lead to a marginal increase in the country’s final energy demand despite healthy economic growth during this period. Any remaining emissions from the energy system are removed by nature or technology — reforestation of an additional 5.8% of Malaysia’s land mass can capture up to 29 million tonnes of CO2 per year, effectively bringing forward Malaysia’s carbon-neutral date by 15 years to 2065.

“Ultimately, the point at which Malaysia achieves carbon-neutrality depends on how aggressively these levers discussed are pursued in steering the economy towards a more sustainable post-pandemic recovery. Other pathways are possible and depend on societal and policy preferences, but a major shift in how society produces and consumes energy is required to limit the rise in global temperatures and address the risks of climate change,” Tan added.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) highlighted in a May report earlier that no new investment in oil and gas (O&G) would be needed if the world is to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.

Tan said in response: “If we do not invest further in O&G in Asean and Southeast Asia, we expect that natural gas will decline, and in time continue to come down.

“In our case, there will be no frontier exploration from 2025 onwards, and we already said for oil, we are going to see a decline of 1% to 2% per annum moving forward,” he added.