Long Term Sustainable Energy Planning for Malaysia: A Modelling and Decision Aid Framework

Malaysia has relied for long on indigenous fossil fuels (oil and gas) to cater domestic energy needs as well exporting substantially in the international markets. However, this situation may change from being energy rich country a decade ago towards slowly becoming a net importer of energy unless any change in proven reserves occurs. Energy planning is, therefore, very important to achieve nation’s goal of becoming a fully developed country by 2020 as well as maintaining the sustainable development all along. A well formulated national energy model, in this context, may not only optimally help to plan for conventional energy sources to meet future energy needs but could effectively identify and integrate widely available renewable energy resources in such planning framework. However, global energy market trends, new regulations, environmental impacts from energy systems, depletion of indigenous energy resources, and other sustainability concerns dare planners, decision makers and researchers to consider more systematic methods. These methods based on integrated energy modelling and decision aid framework could support policy making task obvious to ensure achievement of national objective relating to sustainable energy system. This paper presents an on-going research work where objective is to explore energy modelling and multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) as integrated framework for long term sustainable energy planning for Malaysia. An overview of current situation of Malaysia’s energy sector, the planning practices adopted and analyses of proposed sustainable energy planning framework are provided. Keywords: Energy planning ; Energy modelling; Multi-Criteria decision m aking ; Sustainable energy planning