Malaysia and Vietnam are some of the Asian nations where Masdar and Petronas will jointly explore renewable energy opportunities. Under a memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed, they plan to take their partnership beyond Asia as well.
Their focus as partners will be on utility scale renewable energy, including ground mounted and floating solar projects, offshore wind, with potential to add other regions and technologies to the ambit of their joint exploration.
According to the President and Group CEO of Malaysian state owned energy firm Petronas, Tengku Muhammad Taufik Tengku Aziz the collaboration will include reaching out to the commercial and industrial (C&I) sector for clean energy solutions, and green hydrogen as well. Petronas claims to have more than 1 GW operational and under development solar capacity for the C&I segment in India and Southeast Asia, with more than 90 MW under development in Malaysia for C&I.
Petronas forayed into renewables in April 2019 after it signed an agreement with I Squared Capital to acquire 100% stake in distributed energy solutions company Amplus Energy (see Petronas Steps Into Renewables).
For Masdar, this partnership with the Malaysian state owned energy company Petronas follows its maiden investment in the Southeast Asian region in Indonesia where it is developing a 145 MW AC floating solar project (see Joint Venture For Indonesia Floating PV Plant).
"This agreement marks an important step on Masdar's journey to expand our presence in the Asian market, where we see tremendous potential given the region's rapid economic growth and potential renewable energy resources," said Masdar CEO Mohamed Jameel Al Ramahi.
Recently another Malaysian utility Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB) joined hands with Sunseap Group to target the B2B solar segment in Singapore (see Malaysian Utility Expands To Singapore With Sunseap).