KUALA LUMPUR: The Energy, Science, Technology, Environment and Climate Change Ministry (MESTECC) will tender at least RM3.2 billion in contracts this year, involving renewable energy (RE) and energy efficiency (EE) projects.

Minister Yeo Bee Yin said among the projects would be the retrofitting of 50 government-owned buildings with EE technology.

“This pilot project is worth about RM200 million and will be an open tender for energy-saving companies,” she told reporters after speaking on the greenification of Malaysia at the Malaysian Industrial Development Finance Bhd (MIDF) Green Conference here today.

Yeo said other tenders include projects under the RM2 billion large-scale solar (LSS) 3 scheme and adoption of the Net Energy Metering (NEM) mechanism which would drive about RM1 billion in investment and opportunities within the RE industry.

“However, the NEM (tenders) will exclude the feed-in tariff RE projects,”  Yeo said MESTECC has appointed the Securities Commission (SC) to form a green financing taskforce to study, evaluate, make recommendations and action plans on its RE and EE initiatives.

“The SC will submit a report to us at the end of July and we hope to get its recommendations included in next year’s budget.

“Through this, we hope to see how we can incentivise more of the green private financing either through government regularisation or mobilisation of funds,” Yeo said.

Meanwhile, Yeo has proposed that the fund allocated to industrial research and development (R&D) to be increased to over 50 per cent from the current 8.9 per cent to improve the economy of the country.  

She said the government’s RM500 million R&D fund was shared among a few ministries, including the Higher Education, Primary Industries, Agriculture and Agro-based Industry, and MESTECC.

“If we don’t strategically allocate it (the R and D fund) then it is just really not going anywhere.

“We see a disconnect between what the economy needs and what the researchers are doing. This can be changed really quickly by having clusters connecting our industries with researchers and channelling the (research) funds towards market driven industrial research and collaborations,” she said.

Currently, Yeo said, only 12 per cent of all researchers in the country were part of their respective industrial sectors, while the remaining conducted fundamental research in academic institutions and universities.

“In advanced countries, more money are spent on industrial research, for example, Singapore spends 48 per cent and Japan 64 per cent (of their R and D fund)” she added. - Bernama