KUALA LUMPUR, July 27 — The government will focus on allowing more large-scale integrated urban housing developments to include solar rooftops in their pricing packages to enable property players to look into energy storage solutions.

Economy Minister Rafizi Ramli said that currently, the government is working together with Sime Darby Property Bhd as solar rooftop projects could only be pulled off commercially in large-scale housing projects without government funding but bureaucracy is slowing the process despite the demand from medium and high-end properties buyers.

"The process now is the application for quota has to be made individually. It is quite restrictive for large-scale property developers like Sime Darby Property because they can’t package the whole thing as part of the house,” he told reporters after the launch of the first phase of the National Energy Transition Roadmap (NETR) here today.

Rafizi said the move is taken to expedite technology and application for battery storage.

As for individual solar rooftop, he said that would come as and when the single market aggregator becomes operational and expedite more independent retail markets.

"The market will work itself from there,” he said.

Meanwhile, Natural Resources, Environment and Climate Change Minister Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad said the pilot projects done with Sime Darby Property were at Elmina and Bandar Bukit Raja with up to 10 kilowatt of solar capacity per house, totalling 4.5 megawatt across 450 homes.

He noted that targeted subsidies would fasten the adoption of solar rooftop in housing developments.

"Those who are at the top of the household income level, the tariff that they pay would be close to the market as there will be less subsidy for them. Now there is an incentive for them to actually go for solar rooftops.

"People tend to underestimate that solar rooftops can even take large scale utility size solar. If you look at certain states in Australia and Germany, solar rooftops have even surpassed those installation. That is where we see in Malaysia that we have not really tapped due to certain limitations such as land size and its cost,” he explained.

Rafizi noted that the government is taking a different approach in policy rollout that intended to balance between building the momentum and completing the whole picture with the launch of the first part of NETR.

"In our assessment, it is important to get the excitement and the buy-in especially with the industry players and to bring their attention to Malaysia’s energy ambition. Within a month, we will roll out the second part of NETR which will unveil the kind of policy and ecosystem to support this,” he added. — Bernama