Malaysia.. fuel subsidy and renewable energy

Reading this letter from Distraught Malaysian, Remove fuel subsidy to prevent abuse, it does not take one to be the Prime Minister to realise that long term subsidy of our fuel would just hamper our efforts to stabilize our economy and balance our budget. However, until the Government has established a viable Social Security net for all citizens, and not just those in the civil service, some form of subsidy will be necessary to help the unfortunates survive in this tough world of ever rising costs. The Government instead, must find the political will to cut off the subsidy abuse of the rich and the arrogant, though it will be like asking a guy with a knife to cut off his own hand!

Rather than just mouthing truisms like we cannot live on subsidies forever, the Govt should really think out of the box, to find ways of using renewable energy to keep our energy costs down, so that removing fuel subsidy eventually will not hurt as much. Let me digress a bit and give you an example.

When I was watching an Al Jazeera news program recently, I watched some new Jewish settlements on occupied territory being demolished by the Israeli Govt and what I saw amazed me. All the new residences that were just constructed had solar panels on their roofs, and from the pictures, they looked like those that provided hot water for the homes. It seemed to me that it's a policy in that dry and arid land to have solar panels for every house?

Now, coming back to our nation, if we look around us, in all housing areas, only the few rich and well heeled can afford solar heating systems, as they are priced out of reach by greedy businessmen. On the other hand, air conditioners proliferate the housing estates, sometimes each house having three or more units of standalone air conditioners.

If the Government has the political will to push the country to

• invent air conditioners to be driven by renewable solar energy
• and to also have policies to drive down the prices of solar pv panel prices,
• fund research into inventing new and super efficient batteries

our nation, which has in abundance renewable solar energy would be able to reduce hugely, its dependency on fossil fuel for our energy needs.

Malaysia is so lucky to have sunlight a,most 365 days a year, and why are we not doing something about it? Leaving these efforts just to "big business" will just not work, and market capitalism as we know, only favours the rich and super rich.