08/06/2011 (Daily Express) - The two Acts on renewable and sustainable energy, which have been passed by Parliament to boost development in both aspects, will only be implemented in the peninsula and Sabah, but not Sarawak.

Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB) Chairman, Datuk Seri Utama Shahrir Abdul Samad, said the Renewable Energy Act and Sustainable Energy Development Authority (SEDA) Act cannot be implemented in Sarawak as "there are issues (which) still need to be sorted out".

He said this during a press conference after the opening of the National Seminar on Biogas and Palm Oil Mill Effluent Treatment (POMET) organised by MPOB here Monday.

Earlier in his speech, he urged all the palm oil mills to go into biogas trapping, as with the new Feed-in-Tariff rate of 32sen per kilowatt per hour for biogas plants which is an increase from 21sen previously is expected to come into effect later this year.

"To date two biogas plants generating about 2.95 megawatts of electricity have been connected to the national grid. For mills located far from grid connection points, or do not have ancillary uses for the excess energy, the biogas can be channelled for use in their current boiler and the shell that is saved can be sold," he said.

He said shell price has reached almost RM160 per tonne and a palm oil mill could derive almost RM1million a year from the sales of shell alone.

Shahrir also said extensive research and development has been carried out by MPOB, the industry, universities and many research institutes to use this biomass to produce biocomposite products, biofuel and bioenergy, biofertiliser and valuable phytochemicals.

"However there are numerous issues and challenges.

For example, its use for bio composite products faced issues such as poor quality feedstock which requires pre-treatment, and this increased tremendously the cost of production," he said.

There were also logistics problems such as transporting of oil palm trunks which contain a lot of water from the field to the processing plant, he said, adding similar issues are encountered in biomass used for bioenergy and biofuels.

In addition, he said, the technologies for exploiting such biomass, such as for second generation biofuels were still being developed and have not matured.

"Despite all these issues, research in MPOB have managed to generate various commercialised products such as the oil palm fibre filled polyethylene sheet for making car components," he said.

These sheets are used to produce the rear parcel shelf for Proton and other cars, he said. MPOB has also commercialised fibre-filled dampening sheets used for noise and vibration control in cars, while commercial plywood has also been produced from oil palm trunk.

"The industry itself has gone into commercial production of empty fruit bunch (EFB) pulp and moulded pulp products. Some palm oil mills have processed the EFB fibres and baled these for export for mattresses and other applications," he said.

In bioenergy, he said, palm oil mills have used EFB fibres to generate electricity for their own use and independent power producers have also used EFB to generate electricity under the Small Renewable Energy Power Programme.

There are now four EFB power producers generating about 40 megawatts of electricity to supply mainly to the grid. In term of oil palm biomass and biogas energy projects under the clean development mechanism (CDM), seven such projects in Malaysia have so far obtained 772,615 tonnes in certified Emissions Reductions or carbon credits, he said.

He said EFB is also used for composting, and based on information on the UNFCCC website, there are at least 23 projects on palm oil composting in Malaysia which are registered under the CDM.

"This is in addition to the 53 oil palm industry and has indeed progressed significantly in terms of utilising its biomass residue, minimising waste and in this regard, is probably the leading sector in the country in terms of implementing zero-waste and carbon reduction initiatives," he said.