KUALA LUMPUR (July 18): The government has approved 48 renewable energy (RE) projects under the feed-in-tariff (FIT) programme, valued at RM1.87 billion, according to the Ministry of Energy Transition and Water Transformation (Petra).

The projects will have generation capacity of 181.25 megawatts (MW), targeted to supply electricity to the grid from 2028 at the earliest, Petra said in a statement.

They comprise biogas (20 projects, 30.93MW), biomass (eight projects, 53.5MW), and small hydro (20 projects, 96.82MW).

The award follows a bidding round for 190MW of FIT capacity that opened between Jan 15 and Feb 19 this year.

The 48 winners were selected among 59 bidders, all of which met the technical and financial criteria set by the authorities, Petra said.

FIT is a programme which allows companies to develop power generation projects using RE that is not yet mature. Part of Malaysians’ electricity bills fund such projects, meant to speed up technology development to bring down the costs and increase adoption as the government targets 70% RE generation capacity 25 years from now.

Rooftop solar is one such programme that has ‘graduated’ from FIT, with mass adoption exceeding two gigawatts to-date through programmes like net energy metering and self-consumption.