Sarawak mulling 2 dedicated undersea cable projects to Singapore, peninsula

Sarawak premier Abang Johari Openg said the state government was in the process of expanding the state’s hydropower capacity to generate 20GW of power. (Bernama pic)

DUBAI: Sarawak premier Abang Johari Openg says discussions are ongoing for the development of two dedicated undersea cables to Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore to channel hydropower energy, in a move to amplify the use of renewable energy.

“We are now discussing this with the federal government, but first comes the question of whether we have the excess energy.

“At the moment we have excess energy, which we can share with our neighbours. Now, we are dealing with Singapore, which has been agreed by both prime ministers,” he told the media after visiting the Malaysia Pavilion at the 28th Conference of Parties here.

The premier noted that there is an improved technology for undersea cables that is competitively cheaper, but did not mention any specific timeline for the project.

Abang Johari said the Sarawak government was in the process of expanding the state’s hydropower capacity to generate 20GW of power.

He said the state government was now trying to improve its approach to generate hydropower using a cascading dam method instead of a reservoir as it would be more suitable for the environment.

“This has been done in Sweden, which has been exporting 40GW of power to Europe.

“What we want to do now is to share with our neighbours – on the domestic level, of course – with Malaysia, then with Singapore and Indonesia, of which we are sharing one hydro project,” he added.