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Abstract: By the year 2020, Malaysia aspires to become a fully developed nation. In order to realize this vision, formally termed ‘Vision 2020’, Malaysia must address nine strategic challenges identified by the government of former Prime Minister Tun Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad. These challenges are: (1) Establishing a united Malaysian nation, (2) Creating a psychologically liberated, secure, and developed Malaysian society, (3) Developing a mature democratic society, (4) Forming a community that has high morale, ethics, and religious strength, (5) Establishing a mature, liberal and tolerant society, (6) Establishing a scientific and progressive society, (7) Establishing a fully caring society, (8) Ensuring an economically just society, and (9) Establishing a prosperous society. The present paper seeks to identify and rank the critical success factors of these nine challenges by applying the Analytic Hierarchy Process. A number of ‘front-line’ critical success factors are discussed at length. The paper also analyzes the impact of respondents’ demography on the outcomes. The findings are expected to provide valuable guidelines to the Malaysian government in course of developing effective action plans to achieve Vision 2020. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to determine the suitable places for a radioactive waste repository in Peninsular Malaysia to implement a permanent disposal facility for disposal sealed radioactive sources (DSRS). The sole Malaysia interim waste storage that stores a large proportion of DSRS was expected to be occupied by 2025 fully. Currently, the nation's licensing board promoted the borehole disposal facility to resolve the full capacity dilemma. The potential sites were determined by the geographical information system (GIS) based Weight Linear Combination (WLC) analysis, integrating the improved Analysis Hierarchical Process (improved AHP) and the technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) approaches. The sensitivity analysis was applied to identify the main contributing factors for corresponding Peninsular Malaysia selection. Ten parametric criteria and three exclusion criteria are applied to assess the potential areas and screen out the unfavorable regions, respectively. Results indicated the final composite map presents 435 areas of very high suitability class with 17.5% coverage from the total suitability class. The top 5 largest candidates with high potentiality are Jerantut & Ulu Lepar, Bandar Tun Razak, Pertang & Simpang, Pertang, Tanjung Ipoh, and Labis, where come from three provinces: Pahang, Negeri Sembilan and Johor. By TOPSIS model, the ranks for these five candidates are Jerantut & Ulu Lepar, Bandar Tun Razak, Tanjung Ipoh, Labis and Simpang Pertang. The model revealed that the suitability ranks is proportional to its area sizes in the approximate values of criteria. The three main contributing factors in Peninsular Malaysia are hydrogeology, seismicity and lithology, which are strongly recommended to involve in other corresponding site selection project. • Top five candidates for radioactive waste disposal site in Malaysia are Jerantut & Ulu Lepar, Bandar Tun Razak, Tanjung Ipoh, Labis and Simpang Pertang. • Three main contributing factors for site selection in Malaysia are hydrogeology, seismicity and lithology. • The suitability index rank is proportional to the area sizes in the consideration of area factor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Malaysia's renewable energy policies do not cover production from waste, including the generation of biogas from palm oil mill effluent. This paper combines life cycle cost-benefit analysis (LCCBA) and the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) to provide new insights into costs and benefits of technologies over the life cycles, and on the basis of this information, asks experts to rank different options to enhance policy. The results show that the continuous stirred tank reactor has a higher LCC of 0.63 Million USD/year, compared to a LCC value of 0.55 Million USD/year for the covered lagoon bio-digester. In terms of cost-benefit, the continuous stirred tank reactor has a higher net present value of 0.46 Million USD/year, higher return on investment of 10.11% and a shorter payback period of 9.9 years compared to the covered lagoon bio-digester system, which has a net present value of 0.22 Million USD/year, return on investment of 7.79% and a payback period of 12.8 years. The continuous stirred tank reactor system therefore emerges as more economically feasible compared to the covered lagoon bio-digester system. On providing this information to experts using AHP, the three top ranked policy options emerged as: i) providing detailed environmental guidelines, ii) standardising technical guidelines for biogas installation and iii) covering the open pond wall using lining. Economic insights and policy opportunities based on this research can be used to inform policy decision making in multiple contexts where biogas plant projects are under consideration, in both Malaysia and globally. • Life cycle cost-benefit analysis (LCCBA) on palm oil mill effluent treatment. • Analytical hierarchy process (AHP) ranks policy options. • Combining LCCBA and AHP offers insights linking economic analysis & policy options. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Currently, around 90% of Malaysia's electricity generation depends on fossil fuels. This reliance, in a long run, is not a secure option. However, renewable energy sources can contribute to a sustainable electricity generation system; but diversifying fuel supply chain is a complex process. Therefore, the aim of this paper is two folds. Firstly, various renewable resources potential are reviewed, and secondly an assessment model is developed for prioritizing renewable options. Four major resources, hydropower, solar, wind, biomass (including biogas and municipal solid waste) are considered. Their electricity generation potential, along with any likely shortcoming is also discussed. Moreover, using a multi-perspective approach based on analytic hierarchy process (AHP), an assessment model is developed. AHP model employs four main criteria, technical, economical, social and environmental aspects, and twelve sub-criteria. From the review it was found that renewable resources seem to have a sufficient potential to develop a sustainable electricity system. Furthermore, AHP model prioritize those resources, revealing that solar is the most favorable resource followed by biomass. Hydropower and wind however, are ranked third and fourth, respectively. The model also shows that each resource is inclined towards a particular criterion; solar towards economical, biomass towards social, hydropower towards technical, and wind towards environmental aspect. Besides reporting AHP model for the first time in Malaysian context, the assessment performed in this study, can serve decision makers to formulate long-term energy policy aiming for sustainability. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]