PETALING JAYA: As Malaysia makes the change into a green economy under the National Energy Transition Roadmap (NETR), there will be more opportunities for well-paying jobs.
A significant number of these jobs will likely be in the renewable energy sector, particularly solar energy.
Under the NETR, solar is expected to dominate Malaysia’s renewable energy mix.
To ensure success of the NETR, and by extension the creation of new jobs, the government has raised the allocation for the National Energy Transition Facilitation Fund to RM300 million under Budget 2025, up from RM200 million in the preceding budget.
However, employment opportunities will not be limited to renewable energy industries, economist Lee Heng Guie told FMT.
He said even those in traditional sectors such as manufacturing and emerging sectors such as electric vehicles and smart cities will have similar job opportunities.
“This is because the green transition is a whole-of-economy development,” Lee, who is from the Socio Economic Research Centre Malaysia, explained.
These jobs are likely to fetch higher salaries. As human resource minister Steven Sim noted earlier, remuneration ranges from RM3,000 to RM16,000 per month.
In contrast, 50% of Malaysians working in manufacturing earn less than RM2,645 monthly.
In the services sector, half of those in finance take home less than RM6,900 a month while a similar proportion of those in the food and beverage industry make less than RM1,964 per month.
NETR is Malaysia’s bid to capitalise on the growing global market for renewable energy and to counter climate change at the same time.
Under the NETR, the country will gradually phase out fossil fuels to raise the proportion of renewable energy to 70% by 2050.
Initially, the NETR was expected to bring in RM25 billion in foreign direct investments (FDIs) and create 23,000 new jobs.
But early this year, the economy ministry revised its projection to RM60.7 billion in FDIs and 84,544 new jobs.
During Ismail Sabri Yaakob’s term as prime minister, the water and environment ministry set a target of 200,000 new jobs by 2030, according to MYFutureJobs portal.
Overall, the NETR is expected to create 300,000 new jobs by 2050 — a tenfold increase from the 30,000 green jobs already available in Malaysia as of 2023, according to the green jobs portal.
Green skills gap
But Malaysians will need to acquire a diverse set of skills to take advantage of these opportunities.
The United Nations Industrial Development Organisation’s Green General Skill Index lists four sets of skills that will be important for clinching those opportunities, Lee said.
“They are engineering and technical, science, operation management and monitoring skills,” he added.
He said these skills are essential to ensure compliance with environmental, social and governance (ESG) requirements.
“So you need someone to track and collect information,” he added.
But, Lee said, Malaysians will also need soft skills, such as adaptability, creativity and other general skills.
He noted that under Budget 2024, the Madani government had focused mainly on offering incentives to businesses and other entities to go green and create jobs.
It had focused less on green labour or jobs that entail reducing human impact on the environment as well as to restore and preserve it.
A look at Budget 2025 shows a similar omission of specific initiatives to strengthen the green workforce, though the supply bill did provide for billions of ringgit for renewable energy projects.
Lee said that while investing in technical and vocational education and training (TVET) can help Malaysians upskill, it is not specifically tied to specific jobs and the skills that green industries need.
He noted that a lack of efficient coordination among stakeholders such as the government, academia and industries when it comes to education and training can lead to shortages of relevant green job skills.
Source: MSN