This article first appeared in The Edge Malaysia Weekly on May 22, 2023 - May 28, 2023

Gentari Sdn Bhd is one of the new renewable energy (RE) players that have attracted significant attention, thanks to the profile of its owner, Malaysia’s national oil and gas company Petronas.

Petronas set up Gentari last June to deliver net-zero carbon emissions solutions through RE, hydrogen and green mobility. Sushil Purohit, former president of global firm Wärtsilä Energy, joined Gentari as its CEO in January this year.

Since its launch, Gentari has signed a flurry of memorandums of understanding (MoU) with partners in India and Malaysia, and acquired a RE firm in Australia.

ESG sat down with Sushil for an exclusive interview, which has been edited for brevity.

ESG: Why did you join Gentari?

Sushil: I joined Wärtsilä as a young engineer and worked for the company for about 25 years. The last job that I did was to lead its global energy business. When I was doing it, I was watching how the [energy] transition was accelerating, especially in Asia. The prospect of countries moving towards a net-zero future was exciting.

When I got the call [from Petronas], [CEO] Tengku [Muhammad] Taufik narrated the vision for Gentari. I was super impressed and took the plunge.

What are the biggest advantages that Gentari has?

We are positioning ourselves to be an integrated clean energy solutions provider. That’s our unique [selling point] because not many companies are looking at [providing] end-to-end decarbonisation [solutions] for customers. We are in RE; we are in green hydrogen; and we are in transportation. That is the advantage that we bring to help our customers in their energy transition.

What does that mean?

For example, an industry has a target to decarbonise by 2030. How do we provide them with green energy? We [can] provide them with hydrogen and we can also decarbonise their fleet ... We are looking for opportunities to execute integrated solutions and we are already doing it in some cases.

You have a target to build up to 40GW of RE capacity by 2030. So far, Gentari has acquired Australian RE firm Wirsol Energy, is installing solar panels in the Pengerang Integrated Complex, among other places, and owns solar projects in India. What is your strategy? (According to Gentari’s 2022 Key Achievements publication, 1.12GW of global RE capacity has been recorded.)

We would like to grow by developing our own projects and collaborating with like-minded companies to do projects together. We would also like to look at opportunities to acquire companies that are a good fit for our strategy. For example, in India, we bought a company that has grown four to five times in the last four years. We have the same plan in Australia. We acquired a company and we want to scale it up rapidly.

We already have a significant footprint in the commercial and industrial space. Now we are going to make sure that we expand that business and, at the same time, expand our utility-scale RE business. [This includes] solar and offshore wind, for example. Once we have these done, we will do more integrated solutions.

Gentari plans to produce up to 1.2 million tonnes of hydrogen per annum by 2030. You’ve signed 13 MoUs with different parties to explore projects that generate green hydrogen in various countries. What is the progress?

We are going to work with partners and governments to do these projects and then serve our customers, who could be in Asia or Europe, and deliver to them the green [hydrogen or ammonia] that they need to decarbonise, [especially] in sectors that are otherwise quite difficult to do so.

We want to be the first mover in the hydrogen market. Our aim is to have the first green hydrogen plant ready by 2027 or 2028. We have already started our feasibility study in India, Malaysia and Canada, for example. We’re making good progress.

We’re seeing demand [for hydrogen] from customers, especially from Europe and Japan.

As for green mobility, Gentari aims to have a 10% market share in electric vehicle (EV) charging in Asia-Pacific by 2030, which translates to around 25,000 public charging points. Gentari has so far installed 151 EV chargers in Malaysia with partners.

We are also doing something called vehicle-as-a-service (VaaS). It’s like a fleet service where we lease vehicles to logistics companies. We have about 1,000 three-wheelers in India now that are electric (and on subscription to electric mobility provider MoEVing). We have also signed an MoU with Tata Power to take 5,000 of their four-wheeler EV commercial vehicles. We will deploy around 1,000 of them this year. These vehicles are custom-made for commercial logistics use.

Some of the areas that you’re going into, like solar and EV charging, are already crowded with existing players. How can Gentari fill a gap in the market?

We are here to look at what customers need. For us, it’s important to understand how we can add value to our customers and bring in technology and investments to make it happen. We are uniquely positioned as a company with strength in project execution and we can deploy capital quickly.

Will you be pushing the needle and going into less mature areas like battery storage or EV trucks?

With the EV business, we’re learning from India and we will use that experience to scale it in Malaysia … We focus on delivering value to our customers. We need to look at different technologies. So, why not battery storage? We have taken over a company called Wirsol in Australia and they already own a battery storage asset.

Some may think that Gentari is not operating on an even playing field thanks to the backing of Petronas. With the kind of resources that you have, could Gentari afford to be more ambitious?

We have pretty ambitious goals. We would like to invest a lot in Malaysia and be a strong player here. At the same time, we’re looking at Asia-Pacific and beyond. We aspire to become a global leader in this space.

Clearly, we would love to have all the players do well in the market. I think there are enough opportunities. If the entire world moves towards a net-zero future, 80% of the power generation capacity needs to transition to RE. We encourage people to do more projects with us. I don’t think we are competing. There is enough space for everyone.

Gentari could generate revenue from selling RE through solar assets, leasing EVs and installing EV chargers. How will Gentari be financially independent? Do you have a target timeline to be profitable?

There is very strong backing from Petronas for us to execute our projects but we are an independent company and we will also pursue funding from outside to accelerate our growth. It could be external investors, project-level investment or debt financing.

We cannot share that kind of target at this point in time. Currently, we are in the venture-building phase.

Will the emissions avoided due to your projects be counted as offsets for Petronas?

Petronas is looking at us to execute RE projects and we are also going to work on decarbonising Petronas assets. That will reduce their emissions.

Are Gentari’s projects “cannibalising” Petronas’  main revenue stream, which is from oil and gas?

No. Petronas has the great vision to create a RE business and I think there is a lot of demand for that. I think it will create significant revenue for Petronas going forward. The energy transition is not going to [happen immediately]. It’s going to be a long transition because countries are at different stages.

It’s [also] about affordability and energy security. Will [RE] replace fossil fuels immediately? No. We need gas as a [transition] fuel. If we want to decarbonise the energy industry, I think [natural] gas will play a major role for decades. It’s also good to understand that Petronas is building this entity as part of its growth strategy.

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