Straight answers in one place.

Yes, for regulated buildings. Since the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Act 2024 came into force on 1 January 2025, buildings notified by the Energy Commission must complete an energy audit through a Registered Energy Auditor within 12 months of notification. Energy efficiency in Malaysia moved from voluntary to a legal obligation, with penalties attached.

We set out every deadline in our guide to EECA 2024 compliance. The Act replaced the Efficient Management of Electrical Energy Regulations 2008 and applies to Peninsular Malaysia and Labuan. Sabah and Sarawak are developing their own energy efficiency regulations.

You will be formally notified by the Energy Commission, and the list of regulated buildings is not public. That means you cannot look it up, and many building owners are unaware they are in scope until the notification arrives and the clocks start running.

Roughly 1,200 buildings were initially scoped, generally the largest electricity consumers. If you are unsure, ask us. It is one of the first questions we raise with any prospective client.

Any building notified as a regulated entity, within 3 months of notification. The Registered Energy Manager (REM) is a specific credential issued by the Energy Commission. It is not a job title you can assign to an existing facilities employee unless they hold the registration.

Once appointed, an Energy Management System must be implemented within a further 12 months. Susten holds REM registration and operates its own energy management system, so both obligations can be met through one appointment.

A structured system for monitoring, recording and acting on your building's energy performance, not simply a meter or a spreadsheet. Regulated buildings must implement one within 12 months of appointing their Registered Energy Manager, and report annually to the Energy Commission.

Susten's cloud platform meters the full cooling chain continuously and produces the monthly verification record that reporting requires.

Often, yes, through SEDA's Energy Audit Conditional Grant (EACG), which funds the audit itself. The grant is available to commercial and industrial building owners who appoint an ESCO registered with the Energy Commission. Susten holds that registration and applies to SEDA on your behalf.

Eligibility generally requires substantial consumption, on the order of 100,000 kWh per month. Grants are disbursed on a first-come, first-served basis from a finite allocation, so timing matters.

It is conditional. Recipients commit to implementing energy-saving measures worth at least the value of the grant, within three years of the audit being completed. That obligation forms part of the grant agreement with SEDA. It is not a condition the ESCO imposes.

We raise this before an application rather than after. If a building is not prepared to act on what an audit finds, the grant is the wrong instrument and it is better to establish that at the start.

No. You must appoint an ESCO registered with the Energy Commission, and there are several. Susten is one of them. You are also under no obligation to appoint us for any implementation work that follows the audit. The three-year commitment is to SEDA, and you may fulfil it with whoever you choose.

The amount depends on building type and the current programme cycle, so we quote it against the live guidelines rather than from memory. The programme runs under the 13th Malaysia Plan, and limits have changed between plan cycles. Ask us and we will confirm the figure applicable to your building at the time you apply.

Under our commercial models, nothing upfront. Susten works on an Energy Performance Contract, where we fund and deliver the project and are repaid from a share of the energy savings, or Cooling as a Service, where a third-party investor funds and owns the plant and you pay for the cooling you use.

Every client we have worked with has wanted zero capital outlay, so both models are structured for it. The building carries no capital expenditure and, under an EPC, is cash-positive from the first month of operation.

An arrangement where the energy services company funds the works and is paid out of the savings it generates, rather than charging a fee for the equipment. Susten designs, funds, builds and operates the plant, then takes a share of the measured energy savings over a long-term contract. The client keeps the remainder.

The significant point is where the risk sits: if the savings do not materialise, neither does our payment. We carry the performance risk, not the building owner.

A model where you buy cooling as a metered utility instead of buying a chiller plant. A third-party investor funds and owns the system Susten designs and builds. You avoid the capital cost entirely, keep the asset off your balance sheet, and pay per unit of cooling delivered.

Susten operates the plant against a contractual efficiency guarantee, so the operator is accountable for how efficiently the cooling is produced.

Under a performance contract, we are not paid for savings that do not occur. Payment is calculated from metered performance against a baseline agreed and fixed before any equipment is specified, and the baseline is not re-based over the contract term, so the target does not quietly get easier.

Savings are verified monthly and reported to the client. That report is the basis on which invoices are raised, which means the client checks the same number we bill from.

In Malaysia's climate, typically 40% to 60% of total electricity use in a commercial building. Cooling is normally the single largest line item on the bill, and the one containing the most recoverable waste. It is also the largest driver of a building's peak demand, which matters under the current tariff structure.

kW/RT measures the electricity a plant draws to produce one ton of refrigeration. Lower is better. It is the standard efficiency measure for chilled water systems and the number our contracts are settled on.

As a rough guide: an unimproved commercial plant commonly sits between 1.1 and 1.4 kW/RT. Susten's commissioned plants run between approximately 0.52 and 0.79 kW/RT depending on building type and load, measured against fixed baselines.

Under RP4, the former Maximum Demand charge was replaced by separate Capacity and Network charges, with capacity billed against your recorded peak demand in kilowatts. The base tariff also rose 14.2% to 45.62 sen/kWh, and the six-monthly ICPT was replaced by a monthly Automatic Fuel Adjustment that moves considerably more often.

Because chillers are usually the largest contributor to a building's peak, improving cooling efficiency reduces three things at once: total consumption, the peak demand your capacity charge is calculated on, and your exposure to a fuel adjustment that changes monthly.

Roughly two months for the audit, then nine to twelve months from contract signing to commissioning. The work is staged around an occupied, operating building.

Our projects have been delivered in working office towers, hotels and malls that could not go dark. Existing plant is typically held available through commissioning so cooling is never dependent on a single changeover.

Susten Sdn Bhd is a Malaysian Energy Service Company (ESCO) based in Kuala Lumpur, specialising in commercial cooling. We audit, redesign and rebuild chiller plants, designing the chiller to the building's actual load and climate, writing the control logic in-house, and running the result on our own cloud energy management system.

We are registered as an ESCO with the Energy Commission, hold Registered Energy Auditor and Registered Energy Manager registrations and ISO 9001:2015 certification, and took two awards at the National Energy Awards 2026: the Special Award for Energy Performance Contracting, and Category 2, Energy-Efficient Building (Retrofitted Building). We also received a Special Award at the National Energy Awards 2023, where an office tower we retrofitted was recognised in the Energy-Efficient Building in Retrofitted Building category.

Across Malaysia, from our office in Kuala Lumpur. We have delivered and currently manage plants in Kuala Lumpur, Penang, Melaka and Kelantan, across office towers, retail malls, hotels and grocery retail.

Because they are metered, verified monthly, and they are what we invoice against. Savings are measured as actual metered consumption compared with a baseline fixed before the work begins, in the manner of IPMVP Option C, with plant-level sub-metering underneath as the contractual tie-breaker.

Every figure published on this site comes from those monthly verification reports. We do not publish client names or their consumption data, but the underlying records are available to a serious prospective client under NDA.