Renewable Energy in Malaysia: Targets, Schemes and Who Each One Is For

If you have tried to read up on renewable energy (RE) in Malaysia, you have probably hit three different target numbers — 31%, 40% and 70% — and a wall of acronyms: FiT, NEM, LSS, CGPP, CRESS, SELCO. None of it is contradictory; it is just spread across half a dozen agencies, each documenting only its own corner. This guide pulls the whole landscape into one place: the national targets and the roadmaps behind them, the family of schemes, and — the part most sources skip — which programme is actually meant for a homeowner, a business, or a developer.

Is the target 31%, 40% or 70%?

All three. They are milestones on the same trajectory, set across two overlapping roadmaps.

The Malaysia Renewable Energy Roadmap (MyRER), published by the Sustainable Energy Development Authority (SEDA), sets the near-term marker: a 31% renewable-energy share in the national installed-capacity mix by 2025. MyRER projects over MYR 53 billion in investment and 46,636 job creations in reaching its goals.

The wider National Energy Transition Roadmap (NETR) then carries the trajectory forward: 31% of installed capacity by 2025, 40% by 2035, and 70% by 2050. A key nuance often lost in headlines — the 70% figure is renewable energy as a share of electricity generation / installed capacity, not of the whole energy system. In capacity terms, Malaysia’s installed renewable capacity is expected to expand from about 6 GW to 14 GW on the way there.

NETR is broader than solar panels. It is built on six energy-transition levers — Energy Efficiency, Renewable Energy, Hydrogen, Bioenergy, Green Mobility, and Carbon Capture Utilisation and Storage — structured into 10 flagship catalytic projects. Those flagships are expected to draw over RM25 billion in investment, while the broader energy transition is framed as an RM1.2 trillion to RM1.3 trillion opportunity by 2050. Underpinning all of it is a net-zero greenhouse-gas-emissions aspiration by 2050.

On the fossil side, coal-fired power generation is to be fully phased out by 2044 under the NETR, with roughly half of coal capacity retired by 2035 — the government position stated by the Energy Transition Minister and reflected in the NETR’s Peninsular Malaysia Generation Development Plan modelling. To firm up an increasingly solar-heavy grid, that same generation plan adds 100 MW of battery energy storage (BESS) each year from 2030 through 2034, reaching 500 MW of installed BESS by 2034.

Roadmap	Milestone	What it measures
MyRER	31% by 2025	RE share of installed-capacity mix
NETR	31% (2025) → 40% (2035) → 70% (2050)	RE share of generation/installed capacity
NETR	Net-zero aspiration by 2050	Greenhouse-gas emissions
NETR	Coal fully phased out by 2044	Coal-fired generation

Which scheme is actually for me?

The schemes sort cleanly by who you are. The two with fully documented self-service mechanics are Net Energy Metering (for self-consumers) and the Corporate Green Power Programme (for corporates buying green power); the rest of the family serves producers and larger buyers.

You are…	Look at	What it does
A homeowner (Peninsular Malaysia)	NEM Rakyat (part of NEM 3.0) → SELCO	Offset your bill with rooftop-solar exports
A government ministry or agency	NEM GoMEn (part of NEM 3.0)	Same offset mechanism, public-sector quota
A commercial or industrial consumer	NOVA (part of NEM 3.0)	Virtually aggregate solar across accounts
A corporate buyer wanting green power	CGPP / CRESS	Buy RE + green attributes via a virtual PPA, or green supply over the grid
An RE generator / developer	FiT, LSS, CRESS, SELCO	Sell to the grid or supply corporate buyers

The self-consumption schemes (NEM) and the corporate-supply scheme (CGPP) are detailed below. The generator- and developer-facing programmes work as follows:

• Feed-in Tariff (FiT 2.0) — relaunched by SEDA on 17 October 2024 under the Renewable Energy Act 2011, it now covers biogas, biomass and small hydro only (solar is no longer under FiT). The 2025 round offered a 190 MW quota, using a fixed rate for the first 10 years and then a bid-within-band mechanism for the remaining 11 years.
• Large Scale Solar (LSS) — the competitive utility-scale solar tender (see the next section).
• Corporate Renewable Energy Supply Scheme (CRESS) — launched September 2024 for corporates buying green power over the grid (see below).
• Self-Consumption (SELCO) — the Energy Commission’s on-site-use scheme with no grid export. Updated guidelines issued 24 December 2024, effective 1 January 2025 removed the 85%-of-max-demand cap, allowed ground-mounted and floating within-premises systems, opened it to agriculture, and require BESS at least equal to solar capacity for systems above 72 kWp. From 1 July 2025, SELCO is the default path for new self-consumers.

How big is Large Scale Solar (LSS)?

Large Scale Solar (LSS) is Malaysia’s competitive tender for utility-scale solar, run since 2016. As reported by the energy ministry (PETRA), LSS has approved 6,028 MW across six rounds to 117 companies, with a separate LSS5+ round adding a further 618 MWp:

Round	Year	Awarded capacity
LSS1	2016	354 MW
LSS2	2017	465 MW
LSS3	2019	491 MW
LSS4	2020	823 MW
LSS5	2024	1,920 MW
LSS6	2025	1,975 MW

Competitive bidding drove tariffs down sharply over the rounds — from around 39 sen/kWh in LSS1 and 33.98 sen in LSS2 to 17.78 sen in LSS3 and 17.68–24.81 sen in LSS4, with LSS5 finalised in roughly the 13–16 sen/kWh range. (The capacity figures are the ministry’s; the lowest-tariff series is well documented in industry and legal analysis rather than in a single official tariff table.) Across all schemes — LSS, FiT and NEM — cumulative installed solar PV reached about 5.8 GW (5,777.73 MW) by end-2025.

How does Net Energy Metering (NEM 3.0) work?

NEM lets you install rooftop solar, use what you generate, and send the surplus to the grid for credit. NEM 3.0 ran from 2021 to 2025 with a total quota allocation of up to 2,500 MW, split into three programmes for three kinds of user:

• NEM Rakyat — 700 MW, for domestic consumers in Peninsular Malaysia.
• NEM GoMEn — 100 MW, for government ministries and agencies.
• NOVA (Net Offset Virtual Aggregation) — 1,700 MW, for commercial and industrial consumers.

The credit mechanism differed by programme. Under NEM Rakyat and NEM GoMEn, excess solar energy exported to the grid was credited on a one-on-one offset basis against the electricity bill, for up to 10 years. Under NOVA, exported credits were instead valued at the Average System Marginal Price (SMP) — a market-referenced rate rather than a straight one-for-one offset — which is why the household and commercial programmes are worth understanding separately.

NEM 3.0 was extended in its final stretch: SEDA offered additional quota of 50 MW for NEM Rakyat and 300 MW for NOVA, with applications opening via e-NEM from 25 November 2024 and running until 30 June 2025 (or until quotas were exhausted). NEM 3.0 concluded at the end of June 2025, with more than 2,600 MW awarded in total. From 1 July 2025, new self-consumers move to SELCO (self-consumption with no grid export), and a Solar ATAP programme is slated to begin in January 2026.

What about corporates that want green power?

Not every organisation wants to own panels. The Corporate Green Power Programme (CGPP) lets a company contract for renewable electricity instead. Under CGPP, a corporate consumer signs a virtual power purchase agreement (VPPA) with a solar power producer for the renewable energy and its green attributes, while firm supply is backed up by the electricity utility company. It is, in effect, a way to claim green power without taking on grid-balancing risk yourself.

Demand was strong: the CGPP was allocated a total quota of 800 MW, which was fully subscribed on 8 November 2023 by 32 successful applicants. For corporates that missed that window, the Corporate Renewable Energy Supply Scheme (CRESS) — launched in September 2024 (Energy Commission guidelines effective 20 September 2024) — offers an alternative. CRESS uses a Third-Party Access (TPA) model: a renewable developer sells green electricity directly to a chosen corporate customer over TNB’s grid, in return for a System Access Charge (SAC). The SAC was originally 25 sen/kWh (firm supply) and 45 sen/kWh (non-firm); from 1 July 2025 it was cut to 20 sen/kWh (firm) and 40 sen/kWh (non-firm), alongside a reduction in the CREAM community access charge from 15 to 9 sen/kWh.

Who runs all of this — and does it work the same everywhere?

Responsibility is deliberately split across bodies:

• SEDA (Sustainable Energy Development Authority) administers the self-consumption and feed-in schemes (NEM, FiT, and the MyRER roadmap).
• The Energy Commission (Suruhanjaya Tenaga) and the Single Buyer handle programmes such as CGPP, CRESS and SELCO.
• The energy ministry (NRECC/PETRA) sets overall policy and owns the NETR.

One structural caveat matters before you assume any scheme applies to you: Malaysia does not run a single national power sector. Peninsular Malaysia, Sabah and Sarawak operate under separate power-sector regimes. The NEM programmes described above are framed for Peninsular Malaysia (NEM Rakyat explicitly covers domestic consumers there); Sabah and Sarawak run their own arrangements, so an offer or quota in one region does not automatically exist in another.

What’s next

Malaysia’s RE framework moves quickly — quotas open and close, schemes are extended or renamed, and new corporate-supply mechanisms keep arriving. Before you act:

• Match the scheme to your profile first (household → SELCO / Solar ATAP; C&I → NOVA while it lasts, then SELCO; corporate buyer → CGPP or CRESS), then confirm the live quota and rules on the administering agency’s portal — SEDA for NEM/FiT, the Energy Commission and Single Buyer for corporate programmes.
• Check your region. Peninsular, Sabah and Sarawak differ; do not assume a Peninsular scheme is available where you are.
• Treat any figure flagged under Verification needed as provisional until confirmed against a primary source — the older RE-share-of-consumption splits and MyRER’s absolute-MW capacity target remain unverified.