The oil palm industry in Malaysia can generate an additional revenue of RM14bil a year from the production of hydrogen fuel, bio-fertiliser and animal feed from biomass.
This could mean a 20% increase to the current revenue of RM60bil from oil palm products, Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin said.
The Government has made bio-gas development one of its focus via the Entry Point Projects (EPP) to generate an estimated RM2.9bil in gross national income by 2020 and create another 2,000 jobs.
“As technology becomes more available in the next few years, bio-oil, which would be produced through the biomass-to-liquid technology, could be converted into green transportation fuels,” said Muhyiddin.
He added that these EPPs would not require any public funding as they will rely entirely on RM3.2bil worth of private investment over the next 10 years.
He was launching the setting up of the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia-Yayasan Sime Darby (UKM-YSD) Chair for Sustainable Development Zero Waste Technology for the Palm Oil Industry here yesterday.
YSD contributed RM15mil to the endowment fund for the UKM-YSD Chair, to help the university and Sime Darby Plantation’s research teams, to work together on milling processes through homegrown green technology that would result in zero emission of greenhouse gasses.
Muhyiddin said: “I hope the research done by our very own local experts will act as a catalyst to develop and create our very own green technology that can stand high with the rest of the world.”
The Chair was the second major collaboration between YSD and UKM, with the first being the UKM-YSD Chair for Climate Change last year.
UKM vice-chancellor Prof Tan Sri Dr Sharifah Hapsah Syed Hasan Shahabudin said the university’s strength in climate change and renewable energy were the foundations set up to secure the two Chairs.
“The Chair will have a positive spin-off on human resource capacity building, development of intellectual properties and their commercialisation,” she said.
