Oil palm empties can give Sabah fuel to spare

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KOTA KINABALU: Sabah is one of the country's biggest producers of palm oil, yet only four per cent of the state's power is generated by biomass.

In the discussions on the state's power shortage, little attention has been paid to the possibility of using oil palm waste to fuel biomass power plants.

Only three plants in the state generate power from oil palm's empty fruit bunches (EFB).

Several large oil palm companies utilise the EFB to power their plants.

Donald Lim, the chief operations officer of Seguntor Bioenergy Sdn Bhd and Kina Biopower Sdn Bhd which operate two of the plants, cited high investment and a shortage of EFB as obstacles.

"Banks often do not support biomass plants, despite backing for renewable energy from the state government.

"If it were not for carbon credits, such a business would not be viable here."

Both the plants, in Sandakan, produce 10MW of power each for Sabah Electricity Sdn Bhd's east coast grid.

"We started out with a simple idea of producing green energy, but we are now experts in water treatment and waste management as well," Lim said.

Logistics are also part of the problem as plantations which supply EFB at RM3 per tonne are located all over the east coast. Transporting them incurs costs and produces more emissions from the diesel engines used by the vehicles.

"But if we don't collect the EFB, they are left in dumps which produce the greenhouse gas methane and can pollute the water," said Lim.

"While we love the idea of producing a renewable energy using waste products, we need a lot of support to do so.

"We would like to build more green plants in Lahad Datu and Tawau, which are also major oil palm plantation areas.

"The plantations around a 150km radius of our power plants produce 3,400 tonnes of EFB. Some are used by refineries to power their plants, while the rest is shared by our two plants."