DPM Fadillah Confirms Malaysia's Green Energy Goal on Track

The target of achieving 31% renewable energy (RE) by the end of the year, has been announced by Datuk Seri Fadillah Yusof, the Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia and the Minister of Energy Transition and Water Transformation.

He highlighted the success of the National Energy Transition Roadmap (NETR) at the launch of the country's first residential solar project. The government has approved an additional 5.5 gigawatts (GW) of new RE capacity, attracting at least RM25 billion in investments, supported by a RM2 billion federal seed fund, since its launch in July 2023.

Under the Community Renewable Energy Aggregation Mechanism (CREAM), a rooftop leasing model has been introduced by the residential solar project piloted in Sime Darby Property’s City of Elmina. This mechanism allows homeowners to generate solar power and derive income from leased rooftop space without needing any upfront investment, directly supporting the nation's green energy shift. The government's next goal is to increase the RE mix to 35% by 2030.

Malaysia's 31 percent renewable-energy target by end-year, backed by 5.5 GW of approved additions and RM 25 billion in investment attraction, positions the country visibly among ASEAN's more assertive clean-energy movers. The National Energy Transition Roadmap has provided the coordinating framework that unlocks both public seed funding (RM 2 billion) and private capital deployment at scale.

The CREAM residential-solar mechanism is particularly interesting. Rooftop-leasing structures that allow homeowners to generate income without upfront investment address one of the persistent barriers to distributed renewable deployment: capital-cost accessibility. If the model scales as intended, it can meaningfully accelerate distributed solar adoption across Malaysian residential markets while broadening the ownership base of the clean-energy transition.

For Malaysian utilities, renewable developers, financial institutions and residential property developers, Cognitud's energy transition, responsible investment and market intelligence teams help clients evaluate NETR-aligned opportunities, structure participation in mechanisms like CREAM, and prepare disclosures aligned with Bursa Malaysia sustainability reporting requirements and ISSB expectations that increasingly determine access to sustainable finance across the ASEAN region.