SARAWAK Chief Minister Abang Johari Openg has defended his decision to experiment with hydrogen-powered buses in a green drive to replace current smoke-belching diesel public buses.

In his address at the International Unimas STEM Engineering conference in Kuching, the chief minister said adopting hydrogen technology was “one of the ways forward for clean energy”.

“If we do not go ahead, we will always be left behind (in technological research).”

He said the state needed to take a “a calculated risk” in the pilot project.

Earlier, the chief minister’s chief critic, Deputy Domestic Trade, Cooperatives, and Consumerism Minister Chong Chieng Jen, had described the experiment as “flamboyant and impractical”.

He urged Abang Johari to reconsider the decision as hydrogen technology in the state was not mature yet and could cause the state “to waste a lot of money”.

He pointed out the purchase of hydrogen buses from China and a facility to convert water to hydrogen as examples.

Bandar Kuching MP Kelvin Yii has also called on the chief minister to reconsider the decision.

The first-term MP said he wanted the chief minister to make public the project cost, the details of the contract awarded to the Chinese company for supplying the hydrogen buses, and the economic feasibility study and cost-effectiveness analysis of using hydrogen buses compared with other buses powered by renewable energy, including common electric buses.

He claimed employing the technology would not lower transportation costs.

Yii said while water, one of the main components in the hydrogen technology, was abundant in the state, the amount of energy needed to electrolyse water into hydrogen, and then convert it back into electricity to charge the batteries in the buses, was not cheap.

Yii also asked to know if safety studies had been undertaken on the dangers posed by hydrogen gas in the event of an accident.

Foshan Feishi Automobile Manufacture Co Ltd of China was awarded the contract to supply three buses for the pilot project.

Abang Johari yesterday said the hydrogen buses are expected to hit the roads of Kuching city by March next year. – September 12, 2018.