KUALA LUMPUR (March 8): The federal government should implement a carbon tax mechanism to facilitate the easy rollout of the B20 biodiesel programme nationwide, Malaysian Biodiesel Association president UR Unnithan has suggested.
Speaking at the 2022 Palm & Lauric Oil Conference (POC2022) on Tuesday (March 8), he said the country also needed to accelerate the building and upgrading of infrastructure to move to B20 biodiesel.
“On the supply side, I think the industry is ready to supply. We have a capacity of 2.4 million tonnes and for you to move from B10 to B20 biodiesel, you need to upgrade the blending facilities.
“The government has slowed down the implementation of the B20 biodiesel programme because there is a huge amount of capital expenditure that needs to be put in,” he said.
Putrajaya had said it aims to implement a nationwide adoption of the B20 biodiesel programme by the end of the year.
The programme for the transportation sector was first rolled out in January 2020 but hit a snag because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
In November last year, Plantation Industries and Commodities Minister Datuk Zuraida Kamaruddin said the government intends to continue with its much delayed effort to implement the B20 biodiesel programme nationwide even though Covid-19 had caused delays in the upgrading of biodiesel blending facilities.
“This is in view of the limitation of workforce movement from petroleum companies to provide the technical preparations for the depots involved,” she said during the ministry’s winding-up session for the 12th Malaysia Plan in November 2021.
She also shared that the Ministry of Finance has approved RM35 million in allocation for the front-end engineering design.