Sime Darby Plantation to develop two new biogas power plants with Cenergi

KUALA LUMPUR (Oct 21): Sime Darby Plantation Bhd’s (SDP) subsidiary SDP Renewable Energy Sdn Bhd (SDPRE) plans to develop two new biogas power plants with the largest grid-connected palm oil mill effluent (POME) biogas developer in Malaysia, Cenergi SEA Bhd’s wholly-owned subsidiary Cenergi RE Sdn Bhd (Cenergi).

In a statement on Thursday, SDP said its unit has signed a term sheet with Cenergi on Oct 9, 2021 to co-develop the plants in SDP’s Malaysia operations at the Sungai Dingin estate in Kedah and Kok Foh estate in Negeri Sembilan.

To date, Cenergi has developed three biogas power plants for SDP’s palm oil mills which are currently operational, while two others are under construction with targeted completion in November 2021 and mid-2022, it said.

SDP’s group managing director Mohamad Helmy Othman Basha said the group has been energetically pursuing renewable energy solutions in order to meet its emission reduction targets.

“This latest partnership will accelerate our progress and we are well on track to reach our reduction target of 40% by 2030.

“To date, we have already achieved a relative carbon emission reduction of 18% through biogas initiatives alone and with the current biogas plan, we are expecting to achieve 28% reduction by the end of 2022,” he said.

Besides the two new plants, SDP has 11 biogas plants in Malaysia, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, and nine more are scheduled to be up and running in 2022.

By 2030, SDP aims to have a total of 31 biogas plants.