Malaysia is expected to add 6-8 gigawatts of gas-fired power by 2030 to address growing electricity consumption by data centres, Reuters reported quoting a top industry executive. “I expect Malaysia to add 6-8 gigawatts of gas-fired power by building new plants and extending the life of existing ones as it looks to cut dependence on coal. This represents a 40-54% increase from the current 15 GW of gas-fired capacity,” said Megat Jalaluddin, CEO of Malaysia’s leading electricity solutions provider Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB).
“Total power consumption in Malaysia is on track to increase 30% by 2030, and Malaysia has already invited industry proposals for supply,” the CEO added. “We want to phase out coal responsibly and the next best option that can replace coal is gas,” he said.
Rising gas demand could see Malaysia, the fifth-largest exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG), start importing the super-chilled fuel in four to five years.
Malaysia could also double renewable capacity to almost 20 GW by 2030, from the 9 GW currently, as data centres push for access to cleaner sources of power, the CEO said.
In the last two years, Malaysia has turned to its coal-fired power plants to address surging demand which grew at the fastest pace in 14 years in 2024, according to energy think-tank Ember.
Data centres are expected to require 19.5 GW of power generation capacity by 2035, accounting for 52% of Peninsular Malaysia’s electricity use, from about 2% now.
Malaysia is expected to see the fastest surge in data centre power demand in Southeast Asia, with its share of electricity consumed by data centres in the region to triple to 21% by 2027 from 7% in 2022, a joint report in May by Bain & Co, Google and Temasek showed.
Technology giants including Microsoft, Nvidia, Alphabet’s Google and ByteDance have announced billions of dollars in investments in Malaysia since the beginning of last year, powering an infrastructure boom.