With Malaysians poised to purchase a document 10,000 electrical autos (EVs) this yr, the federal government ought to now deal with how to assist high-mileage and heavy industrial car operators meet their decarbonisation targets.
While gentle industrial electrical vans are efficiently serving to last-mile courier and postal firms to adjust to decarbonisation targets, the battery-electric choice shouldn’t be but a commercially viable resolution for a lot of industrial car operators.
This is the place biogas – already efficiently employed in China, India and the US – is available in as a carbon-neutral gas.
Fortunately, biogas is an vitality supply which Malaysia has in abundance because the world’s second largest producer of palm oil. The waste product referred to as palm oil mill effluents emits a gasoline which generally comprises roughly 65% methane (CH4) and 35% carbon dioxide (CO2), with traces of hydrogen sulphide (H2S). This is the gasoline that smells of rotten eggs.
Biogas might be processed and upgraded to a composition related to fossil pure gasoline that’s equipped by gasoline firms.
This upgraded biogas is understood within the US as renewable pure gasoline, or RNG. In Europe the place cow flatulence and gases from dung are environmental points, the gasoline is known as biomethane and in addition processed and used as carbon-neutral gas.
Natural assets, surroundings and local weather change minister Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad might want to take into account the California Air Resources Board’s incentives for utilization of RNG.
The board has regulated a low carbon gas commonplace designed to improve the variety of paths in direction of transport decarbonisation.
Given that methane emissions can be utilized as a direct alternative for fossil pure gasoline, the minister ought to advocate to finance minister Anwar Ibrahim that incentives be given to the oil palm and agriculture sector to encourage funding within the manufacturing and use of biogas as a transport gas.
Unlike fossil pure gasoline, which has a finite standing, biogas is sustainably produced and much more highly effective, and is generated constantly with out the intermittency of wind and solar energy.
Biogas is already tapped by the Malaysian oil palm sector to energy generator units, however more often than not it generates extra electrical energy. However, the mills are too distant to join and promote energy to the nationwide grid.
For many different palm oil mills, the surplus biogas is flared in order that the methane doesn’t find yourself as a strong greenhouse gasoline puncturing holes within the ozone layer.
Two profitable biogas tasks from palm oil mill effluent in Peninsula Malaysia have confirmed the suitability of biogas to be used as gas for industries and autos.
The first is the FGV Biomethane Project, at Sungai Tengi in Serendah, Selangor, which in July 2016 began supplying compressed biogas referred to as bioCNG (compressed pure gasoline) through trailer to a manufacturing unit positioned about 50km away.
A trial was additionally carried out with a trailer load of bioCNG despatched to a Petronas NGV station in Batu Caves to refuel pure gasoline autos (NGVs). No issues have been reported with any of the autos crammed with bioCNG.
The second biogas challenge is a biomethane plant at Sedenak, Johor, owned by Johor Plantation Berhad. The challenge to inject biogas into Gas Malaysia Bhd’s community of shoppers commenced in June this yr.
Biogas can also be rising as a carbon-neutral transport gas in Sabah. The proprietor of a palm oil mill has a small biogas processor and makes use of the gas for its fleet of China-made pure gasoline vans to transport crude palm oil (CPO) to Kota Kinabalu.
NGV autos diminishing in quantity
The unhappy half is that pure gasoline for autos (NGV) was as soon as a rising trade in Peninsula Malaysia.
At its peak in 2014, there have been about 179 Petronas NGV stations supplying compressed pure fossil gas gasoline to about 74,112 autos, made up of fifty,000 taxis, 1,520 buses, 4,562 lorries and 18,030 personal vehicles, in accordance to Jeffrey Ng of the Malaysian Association of Natural Gas Vehicles Installers.
However, due to the contraction within the variety of NGV refuelling stations, the fleet of pure gasoline autos in operation has sunk to about one-third of its former quantity, and continues to diminish.
Transport operators and workshops that invested in pure gasoline autos and conversion tools are seeing their belongings successfully stranded and questioning whether or not to proceed or shut their companies.
The PGU pipelines owned by Petronas Gas Bhd has no coverage to settle for or to encourage the injection of RNG into its fossil gasoline pipelines, whereas Gas Malaysia Berhad has already pioneered its first RNG injection into its native pure gasoline distribution community from Johor Plantations Bhd’s RNG plant in Sedenak.
Additional funding for a palm oil mill to course of biogas into drop-in gas for transport or to inject it right into a gasoline pipeline shouldn’t be commercially justifiable within the present scenario the place fossil gas prices are closely subsidised.
During the parliament session on Oct 16, deputy financial system minister Hanifah Hajar Taib mentioned the federal government has but to determine on the plan and course of NGV within the nation for the reason that demand for the gas was diminishing.
He mentioned Petronas NGV Sdn Bhd (PNGV), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Petronas, is retailing the gas at RM1.05 per litre, means under its market worth of RM2.77 per litre. It ought to be famous that the gas NGV doesn’t obtain any subsidy from the federal government. Thus, all losses have to be borne by PNGV.
In the case of petrol and diesel, whereas the retail costs of RM2.05 and RM2.15 per litre, respectively, are additionally under market costs, worldwide and native oil firms proceed promoting them due to subsidies given by the federal government to cowl the margin shortfall.
Perhaps the federal government must also subsidise NGV in order that PNGV can cowl the margin shortfall, proceed promoting NGV at RM1.05 per litre, preserve the present variety of NGV refuelling stations for the good thing about present customers of NGV and in addition guarantee a simply vitality transition to Net Zero emissions 2050.
Decarbanisation on route to internet zero emissions
Decarbonisation of area of interest segments of the land transport sector can then happen virtually instantly whereas the nation progresses in direction of full electrification of the transport sector, which many consider continues to be a good distance to go.
During the upgrading of biogas to RNG, the methane content material of biogas is enriched to greater than 95% by stripping it of CO2 content material. The CO2 is launched to the ambiance after the upgrading course of, making the method carbon impartial because the biogas’ CO2 is from wastes.
Thus, RNG gasoline is essential within the land transport trade’s path to carbon neutrality by 2030 and Net Zero Emissions by 2050, and have to be included within the National Energy Transition Roadmap.
It was additionally heartening to hear the deputy minister inform Parliament final month that the Government is prepared to consider the potential and future course of NGV by way of discussions with our bodies just like the National Economic Action Council and with evaluation from Petronas, the only real provider of the gas within the nation.
Petronas comes underneath the Prime Minister’s Office, Thus the Prime Minister’s exertions are mandatory to allow Malaysia to shortly harvest the low-hanging fruit of renewable pure gasoline.
Beyond creating employment alternatives for rural communities in a brand new financial phase of biogas and RNG, the championing of biogas will broaden individuals’s minds past photo voltaic and in direction of the holy grail of vitality, specifically, inexperienced hydrogen.
The views expressed are these of the author and don’t essentially replicate these of eNM.
