The Malaysia’s Energy Sector: A Modeling and Decision Aid Framework for Long Term Sustainable Energy Planning

Malaysia has relied for long on indigenous fossil fuels (oil and gas) to meet domestic energy needs and also contributing substantially to the balance of the trade in international markets. The domestic energy landscape is, however, set to change from being an energy rich country a decade ago towards slowly becoming a net importer of energy unless any last minute 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 system, depletion of indigenous energy resources, and other sustainability concerns dare planners, decision makers and researchers to consider more systematic methods. These methods should be based on energy planning models and decision aid framework to support policy making task obvious to ensure achievement of national objective relating to sustainable energy system. This paper reviews the current situation of Malaysia’s energy sector, the planning practices adopted, and analysis the energy modeling and Multi-criteria Decision Making (MCDM) as a proposed frame work for long term sustainable energy planning for Malaysia.