A non-renewable resource is whose services are essentially fixed in supply and which is not regenerated quickly enough to be economically relevant. Important examples are the fossils fuels, which were laid down millions of years ago and can be treated as fixed or human civilizations, and no fuel mineral resources, such as copper, silver, gold, stone and sand.
Malaysia has a huge reserve of natural gas and crude oil which are generally used in power generation. Moreover, these fuels are subsidized to a large extent. Besides, the price of electricity from the national grid is also relatively cheap. Biomass based power generation is quite prominent among the industries because the country produces large quantities of agro-residues and industrial waste.
Energy Supply and Demand
Energy fuel production in Malaysia is over 80 million tones of oil equivalent Million Tons of Oil Equivalent (Mtoe), with exports of the order 28 Mtoe. Based on 2002 figures, the share of total primary energy supply (excluding trade in electricity) can be broken down as follows:
- Oil: 48.9%
- Gas: 41.4%
- Combustibles (including biomass and waste): 4.8%
- Coal: 4.1%
- Hydro Power: 0.9%
In 2003 the primary supply of commercial energy jumped by 6.8% from 0.6% the previous year. The growth was driven by higher production of crude oil and an increase in natural gas production (National Energy Balance Malaysia, 2003). According to IEA (International Energy Agency) statistics, the fuel mix in Malaysia is changing, in part driven by the government’s recent policy to alter the fuel mix for the electricity sector in order to optimize the certain fuel sources. Consequently from 2002 to 2003, the share of natural gas decreased from 68.5% to 65.3% and the share of coal increased from 14.1% to 24.6%, whilst the use of fuel oil and diesel oil decreased from 10.1% in 2002 to 3.8% in 2003. The share of hydro has decreased by 1% to 6.3% in 2003.
