KUCHING: Two bills relating to the environment and electricity will be tabled in the upcoming State Legislative Assembly sitting next week.
Deputy Minister for Energy and Environmental Sustainability, Datuk Dr Hazland Abang Hipni announced these initiatives, stressing their alignment with the state government’s efforts to promoting green energy use in Sarawak and addressing climate change.
“We will present two new bills, the first related to electricity, and the second related to the environment. Both matters will involve carbon management,” he said during his speech at the Borneo Environmental Conference (BEnConf) 2023 here on Wednesday (Nov 15).
He noted that the state has 1,665 depleted oil wells designated as carbon storage sites. These wells have a substantial capacity to store at least 9 billion tonnes of carbon.
“These figures are significantly higher compared to the carbon storage capacity in Sarawak’s forests, which ranges from 750,000 million to 1 billion tonnes.
“This is a very important figure because compared to other figures where we can store our carbon in depleted oil wells, we have 1,665 onshore and offshore depleted oil well sites with a total capacity of at least 9 billion tonnes,” he explained.
“This does not include the coastal aquifer capacity because we can also store carbon there, besides in depelted oil well sites, which we have yet to calculate.”
Dr Lau Seng, the organizing chairman of BEnConf 2023, was also present at the event.
