Energy Strategy Reviews (May 2024)
Malaysia energy outlook from 1990 to 2050 for sustainability: Business-as-usual and Alternative-policy Scenarios based economic projections with AI based experiments
Abstract
Energy-outlook from past to future specific years has become essential in energy-economy. Malaysia is a member of ASEAN (Association of South-east Asian Nations), and ASEAN is increasing the use of renewable energy by 2050 to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Coal is Malaysia's primary fossil fuel for energy generation, producing large amounts of CO2 and exacerbating greenhouse problems, including air pollution. Moreover, renewable energy capacity has increased significantly worldwide since 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, this study provides an energy-outlook study from 1990 to 2050 as a rationale for Malaysia's emphasis on sustainable energy in the post-COVID-19 years, which has been felt to be absent in previous studies. Here, past data as well as projections of future coal trade, hydropower growth, electricity consumption, renewable energy consumption, and CO2 emissions are shown. An energy-outlook procedure is explored by reviewing the literature to derive data visualizations and projections. Business-as-usual (BAU) and Alternative-policy Scenarios (APS) methods have been used for projections. The article prioritizes coal since coal is the main fossil fuel for electricity generation in Malaysia. The study observed a significant increase in CO2 emissions with increasing energy demand in Malaysia, which is a concern, and the article emphasized the importance of renewable energy in mitigating CO2 emissions. Finally, Long-short-term memory (LSTM) has been used as an initial experiment on how Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be used in the energy outlook study, which indicates the research scope of AI.