Sarawak Energy: Leading Renewable Growth through Digital Innovation

In this episode, we speak with Madam Sim Ko Sin, Chief Digital Officer and Senior Vice President of ICT, Sarawak Energy, who shares her leadership journey and the organisation’s approach to innovation, transformation, and digital resilience. She discusses how aligning bold ideas to long-term value, empowering internal teams, and managing risk are essential to navigating complexity in today’s energy landscape. The conversation also highlights how data integration and AI adoption are being advanced with a strategic, measured approach.

Sarawak Energy is a vertically integrated utility and Malaysia’s largest renewable energy developer, with over 100 years of operational history. The company generates, transmits, and distributes electricity to more than 3 million people across Sarawak, while exporting power to neighbouring regions.

Transcript

AIBP: 0:00

Innovation is a strategic necessity driven by both thinking and aligned to long term business value.

Ko Sin - Sarawak Energy: 0:06

Innovation involves reimagining the possibility and required courage and collaborations across the discipline. So innovation, to me, is actually not about is the necessities that we cannot avoid, that we need to do in order to survive empowering

AIBP: 0:21

women, leadership comes from embracing authenticity, courage and the confidence to lead in one's own way. Thing

Ko Sin - Sarawak Energy: 0:27

is now the for our for our female colleague, to embrace our own leadership style. Be nurturing, be the empathy. Be be passionate about certain things that drive at your own pace, that you are comfortable with. But be courage. Be courageous to take up and reap the opportunity that come to you with

AIBP: 0:53

increasing complexity in the regional energy landscape, digital agility and integrated data ecosystems are the foundation for future growth.

Ko Sin - Sarawak Energy: 1:02

I always see challenges as opportunities. So the next wave of, you know, change or impact, we see is more complex ecosystem, more more more in depth, technologies driven to support the business growth

AIBP: 1:22

from shaping resilient teams to scaling renewable ambitions, we discovered how Sarawak energy is harnessing innovation, data and digital leadership to power a more sustainable and agile energy future. Please enjoy this episode from the aibp ASEAN B to B growth podcast.

AIBP Intro: 1:46

The aibp ASEAN B to B growth podcast is a series of fireside chats with business leaders in Southeast Asia focused on growth in the region. Topics discussed and include business strategy, sales and marketing, enterprise, technology and innovation.

YY - AIBP: 2:10

Hello and welcome to our ASEAN B to B growth podcast, where we sit down with individuals responsible for driving growth within their organizations here in Southeast Asia. My name is Wai, wai, and I will be your host for today. Today, we have a very special guest joining us, Madam sim cosin, the Chief Digital Officer and Senior Vice President of ICTs. Sarawa energy. Sarawa Energy Bucha is an energy development company and a vertically integrated power utility with a vision to achieve sustainable growth and prosperity for Sarawak by meeting the region's need for reliable and renewable energy and providing electricity to 3 million Sarawak kids in urban and rural areas. Without further ado, may I invite madam Colson to give us a brief introduction of yourself, perhaps share with us your journey leading up to your current role as a chief visitor officer and the senior vice president of ICTs rawa energy, alright?

Ko Sin - Sarawak Energy: 3:09

Thank you. Why? It's an honor to be invited to speak with all now my journey, maybe I start with when I graduated, yeah, I graduated in computer and mathematical science from University of Western Australia. And of course, from there, you know, and later on, I started my work life, and later also gained mass MBA with the Imperial College in London. So I have about 30 years of experience in various ICT functions, mainly serving the energy industry. So from my early days, mainly with the upstream business with Royal Dutch Shell, and later on with the power utility which I'm serving now. So I started as a programmer, actually, and then a data specialist, I supported various specialized applications in the upstream exploration and productions portfolio for Shell Malaysia. I have also done a couples of project management on several IT projects. And I'm actually a certified projects professional in in my in my tenure with Shell, which I spent almost 25 or 20 years. I had two obviously assignment which bring me to the shell group, downstream business, as well as a strategy planner in in UK. And then I was then, before I joined Sara energy, I was engaged as a China I am an IT for a new shell venture supporting some advancement in automation technologies. So as you know, I've joined Sara energy as a vice president for ICT in 2018 and become the Chief Digital Officer in 2020 One. My current role is mainly to drive Sarah energy digital transformation agenda, supporting our company expirations towards the the Sarah energy excellence, supporting by supported together by the business unit corporate functions to harness the digital capabilities in progressing our business growth and pursuing the largest, larger things of renewable energies transition.

YY - AIBP: 5:26

Thank you very much. Madam Colson, well, you know, I know very much about surrounds. Energy's key pivotal role in Malaysia and also in the ASEAN energy sector. But in such audience who may not be so familiar, do you provide an overview of maybe it's about energy's history and its role in the region's energy sector. Okay,

Ko Sin - Sarawak Energy: 5:47

so today Sara energy, so we are the Malaysia largest renewable energy developer and also Sarawak primary electricity provider. We call ourselves a vertically integrated electricity utilities and energy development company with strong foundations of 100 years. We like to call our tech line powering Sara growth so our operations cover quite a full range of value change, you know, including mining, coal, mining, power generations, transmission, distributions and retailing to the customer, which also involves some export of powers to our neighboring country. So we are governed and in under the purview of Sarawak, Ministry of utilities and telecommunication, as well as the minister of energy and environmental sustainability. So we transitions our generations mix in the early days, like in 2010 we transitions from a 90% mainly on thermal coal, gas and diesel, into today, which is predominantly renewable hydropower, which is 60% of our renewable energy mix. So hydropower play a central role in Sara energy energies transitions. So we own and operate three large hydropower dam, mainly Batang, ay, murum Bakun, this in combinations have a total value of 3572 megawatts. And in one that is going to be the fourth one that is still in constructions will be available in 2030s about another 1200 megawatts internationally, we also exploring a joint development with Indonesia, our mantarang indokes, also at 1300 capacity, megawatts capacities. So this is basically marking the regional expansions for our company under the Borneo grid visions. But moving ahead, Sara energy is expired to be the regional renewable powerhouse for your audience in ASEAN, we are looking to share our hydropower resources with our neighboring including Brunei Sabha, Singapore and Peninsula and beyond. So Sarah, aim to increase our generation capacities to 100 gigawatt by 2030s, and 15 by 2035, while maintaining the 60% renewable energy mix.

YY - AIBP: 8:19

That's us. That's amazing role. You know, you've talked about how, like, 90% was thermal energy, and then now 60% is, it's a renewable mix, and you're not just applying for surround itself, but you're a key component of the artist renewable energy sector. Well, medical said, You've mentioned that in your role, in the Chief Digital Officer, you look at the digital transformation from an end to end journey, right? And perhaps your history, bad shell, where you look at both the upstream and downstream, has helped you do this. But I'm curious, what does innovation mean to you personally, and I'm sure with every success, sometimes there's also setbacks, right? How do you measure both the successes and setbacks of innovation initiatives within your organization,

Ko Sin - Sarawak Energy: 9:05

right? Okay, the worlds are evolving very rapidly, right? Cities are becoming smarter. Machines are learning. We know about AI. We talk about AI every day and every minute. Now, sustainability is also very essential, and innovation is the necessities. So innovation involves reimagining the possibility and require courage and collaborations across the discipline. So innovation, to me, is actually not about is the necessities that we cannot avoid, that we need to do in order to survive. So you ask about success and failure. How do we talk about successes and setback. So as far as I'm concerned, both of these, whether it's a success or a failure of our initiative or attempt, it also provide valuable lesson learned and experience for better future preparedness for us, our company visions is a sustainable energy future, so we are at the. Verge of this energy transition, especially in the renewable energy front, this required a very huge scope and collaborated with many, many parties, you know, to to end to make this transition possible. So it relies on a very collaborative actions by many party very a lot of fresh perspective and bold idea and technologies that should be seriously considered into our business strategy planning. So of course, some of these effort need to be monitored and tracked for improvement and ensure value delivery and also operations performance. Understand

YY - AIBP: 10:41

medical I think it's definitely talked about like, how even when it's setbacks, it does offer valuable lessons, right, that can contribute onto successes, a further step back. And if I look at like, when we look at innovation, right, especially when we are looking at AI, there's always talk about how it is important to manage the risk in order to really push the boundaries when it comes to innovation. Is that some best practices that you would like to share with regards to the approach to managing risk within a digital transformation project? Right?

Ko Sin - Sarawak Energy: 11:20

So to start with a transition, a transformations and innovations project are typically risk, very high risk, because it's entail uncertainty, untested ground, you know, unproven concept. So in Sara energies, we actually make sure that the whatever innovations or whatever project we and embarking are aligned and to our strategic business value and objective. So we have to closely align those to our long term goal so we don't deviate from that, because essentially, it's trying to achieve the Ultimates of meeting the business business value. So beside aligning our visions, right? We, we, we are looking at there are different charter, a different scale and scope of innovation. So they are come with a different risk. So it's depend. So we have to be very clear, when we invest in a digital investment, what kind of risk and exposure we are exploring. You mentioned about AI, and recently, we actually take on AI strategies to our companies. Of course, we know AI is is uncharted for many, especially the Gen AI bit, but we have done AI, the classic AI, for a while now it's not it's not something new to us. So we know how much more we want to invest. So we have to be very clear, what kind of return are we expecting. So with that return, how much risk are we willing to to mitigate, and we work with our ecosystem partner to try out things that other has done. We are not in event vendor front, we are the client fund. We are the user front. At the user front usually, we are more more careful with our selection, so we are very selective in our AI use cases. We need to understand what is, what the value is delivering to us, aligning to our business goal, at the same time building up our competency in house, because the reliant on reliant on external could also set us back in our progress and in terms of risk. So those are the area that we are carefully measure against those risks. Having said that at the largest scale, right, we are talking about the company going full fetch on digitalization, then we have to measure out how much efficiency is this capability, the digitalization or AI, the advanced analysis going to bring the value versus the risk exposure of being connected to the world in terms of cyber attack, in terms of data leakage and things like that. Those are the measure we considered, and it's actually one of our enterprise risk management measure as well. Yeah, that definitely

YY - AIBP: 14:09

does answer the question I liked, how you mentioned that when you work with solution providers, you see them more as partners in your journey, and you always look at building the digital capabilities of the internal team itself, not just relying on external vendors, right? What you mentioned that stuck with me was talking about the long term goal. And if I look into history, I think the transformation for raw, digital journey, you have charted it since like 2018 right? And I believe 2025 is actually a very important year. I want you to share with us a little bit more about it. But when you look at this long term journey that sarawa energy has, maybe you share with us some key lessons during this period as you charted the surround. I. Energy towards its milestone.

Ko Sin - Sarawak Energy: 15:02

Yeah. So talking about it, the digitalization came from the top, yeah. The we have a strong commitment from our leadership all the way to the board. So the leadership has given the focus and drive for our transformations, and we are in the journey. And you mentioned 2025 is a significant milestone, is because we set our targets where we started in 2017, and 18. Key lesson learned, if I look back, I think, as I mentioned, right the top down, the strong commitment and clear, compelling, objective and purpose, why we want to do this is very clear from top down. So the transformation also required people first approach, the change management, the skill and capability development. While we go through these changes, there's a lot of uphill training and build the muscle, and you need to timely reward and recognize your people who come the long way. So I think we did that. We see a lot of change in the way we work through these transformations, especially during the COVID times. You know, during the MCO, no one can go to your counter, no operations can operate normally. And most of our retail, most of our call center need to be operate from home. So those are, those are things that taught us, the lessons that digitalization provide us a flexibility and allow us to continue operate. So business continuity, you know, if you look into it. So from there, we started to recognize our people, and then they are being rewarded and recognized. So AIB is one of them that's seeing that. Hey, Sarah energy, you have done quite a few good area you know, in meter reading cannot go to the house, and we use some mobile devices to read it. So those are the those are the good recognitions that build confidence to to our in house workforce. And continuous learning is one of the key learning as well, and adaptability is essential. We also benchmark ourselves with our peer and best practices. So we recently got a grant from us, trade USTDA, working with Apri to benchmark our initiative. So are you doing the right thing in smart grid? You should focus more on predictive maintenance, or you should focus more on outage management and things, things along those lines, should you integrate your data in what manner? How do you ensure that your environments are secure and resistant? So those are, those are key, key lesson learned and strategic partnerships, strategy can support us to accelerate and scale faster. We know that we as a entity, we have limited resources and capabilities, so leveraging on the ecosystem partner is one of our strategic pillar to support us.

YY - AIBP: 17:59

Ernest, I like how you mentioned that it's so important to recognize the work that the teams have done, right, because then that gives additional added incentive for them to continue the good work well, with for many digital leaders that in 2025 it's also comes with it quite a bit of volatility and change in the markets, right and Southeast Asian needs to work maybe closer together, first, around energy. Do you see any kind of like perhaps future opportunities or challenges, and how are you looking to better, effectively, more effectively address them?

Unknown: 18:39

Press as in, the

YY - AIBP: 18:41

change could be volatility in the global markets. Could be volatility in, say, energy sustainability. I think all these are areas that maybe digital leaders will want to see how tools, digital tools, can help to have more resilience created for the organization, right? Similar to what you've mentioned about how COVID 19 during the MCO period, where the team was pushed to do more with what they had. Do you see the current, maybe more volatility in the markets also creating the same kind of environment that offers a opportunity for sarawa energy to search ahead.

Ko Sin - Sarawak Energy: 19:23

There is always this kind of volatilities in the markets, right? And now, especially So, perhaps you can say the geopolitical as well, in play and so on. Now, as far as the business, I think you know, as long as you build in the your your equate muscle, right? You have to practice your muscle. So since the pandemic, since the transformations, we have built up a lot of resilience and adaptability and agility in how we operate and how we adopt and embrace change and innovation. So those are the thing I think is good. I always see. Challenges is an opportunities. So the next wave of, you know, change or impact we see is more complex ecosystem, more more more in depth, technologies driven to support the business growth. So ICT is no longer like a support functions, but more of the key. I call it the needle mover for the company. So you have to recognize as part of the core skill, core technical competency, to allow the company to grow and transform and evolve and adapt and prepare for the future. So critically, digitalization continue to to be the central piece for us. We actually need to then evolve into the OT, we called OT, which is our operational technologies conversion area. We have to have more integrations in terms of data. And data is still an essential part to to feel, to feel all the information, the insight and the value you know that aggregate you know together with various resources that we have right from our instruments all the way to our meter reading, to the weather, weather forecast or plant performance metrics, etc. So those are area that we are interested to go in. And of course, technology continues to evolve. They talk about real time simulation through digital twin technologies and sensors in the plants, Smart Sensor, IoT. So those are the area where I see our team in this space, the organization, need to cope with and continues to grow and embrace these changes and be selective, AI big data analytics, you know? I mean, there are so much that dawn on us, but we can be. We need to go in with our eyes wide open, as I always said, and cyber security investment as well, we continue to collaborate with our research and development team, and then, you know, maintain our posture so that we can be agile, but yet agile, but yet secure right when we move forward. Not sure whether I answer your question

YY - AIBP: 22:15

definitely. I think when you look at the digital journey that sarawa LNG has gone through, I believe there were already, like, different periods of volatility, and the idea for digital digital transformation is to build the agility and resilience of the organization to better address them while looking into innovation, right? Like you've mentioned, how cyber security needs to be put in place in order for the company to embark on this digital transformation. Even more well, if I look into your own personal experience as a leader, do you define and measure your success as a leader? Are there perhaps specific role models or benchmarks that guide inspired you.

Ko Sin - Sarawak Energy: 23:07

I think I'm continue to be inspired by many successful individuals, and personally, I'm a strong advocate of collaborations and cross business teamworks to achieve greater impact through collective contributions. Just beginning of this year, we have successfully migrated, as for Hannah, migrations involving collaborations of the entire company, working towards the same goal, spent across several years of hard work. That achievement was a great one that we celebrated with with our very senior managements and and I can see the team excitement when they were recognized at our year end town hall by our group, Chief Digital group, Chief Executive Officer to recognize the the impact that The work has contributed to the organization. So I believe all these experience will enrich myself as as individuals and as my journey and and with my team, I believe a diverse perspective leads to better problem solving, decision making, you know, and and I think everyone know that we have this one plus one equal to three. So mathematically not correct, right? One plus one doesn't equal to three. But when the individual work together effectively, they combine the output and it can exit exceeded the sum of of the individual efforts. Yeah,

Unknown: 24:38

yeah. I can definitely see that. Yeah.

Ko Sin - Sarawak Energy: 24:43

So in Sara energy, we encourage the people to conduct ourselves through a few core values. So two of them I picked is, one is accountability, and the other one, you know, which is to me, resonate, resonate most to me when I take on the job. We. Strive our best in making the decision. The other core value is more unity, as I advocate early on, about perspective from others, draw the strength from each other, yeah, so I believe in that, yeah.

YY - AIBP: 25:15

I can tell that you are very nurturing leader, because you talk about the value of teamwork, the value of giving recognition to your team so they do good work. And I think that's truly a mark of a great leader. Well, you know, you are a rare one and male dominated industries, right? When we talk about technology, are you talking about energy? It is a predominantly male dominated environment, right? What would you say to perhaps young women who are also aspiring to leadership roles within these industries,

Ko Sin - Sarawak Energy: 25:50

right? Well, I've been asked many times, because I'm in the energy industry, like you said, is the dominantly, not females industry? Now, how? How it places. I think there's a sweet spot, meaning that we have a very important role to play in in a predominantly male, male industry, which means you are unique, your niche, you have very high value to contribute. So my, my, I mean, I would say advice, my sharing will be belief in our own expiration, believe in yourself and stay true to who we are. You know you don't have to be like a man in order to carry out the work. So I think also, you know, be yourself, be confidence and be persistent in what you believe and perceive. Perceive what you're doing is, you know

YY - AIBP: 26:43

the right thing,

Ko Sin - Sarawak Energy: 26:46

yeah, when you're passionate, encouraged and empowered, instead to have this knock on effect right to the whole team. So and I very thankful to my management as well for my male colleague support in the leaderships on driving the women leadership development. So I think it's now the for our for our female colleague to embrace the embrace our own leadership style. Be nurturing, the the empathies, be be passionate about certain thing that that drive at your own pace, that you are comfortable with. But be courage. Be courageous to take up and reap the opportunity that come to you. No need to shine away. I mean, female generally are more reserved in taking risks. Sometimes we just need to take it on, you know, take on the actions and take the challenge, you know, and and when you take the most difficult challenge, and that's when you have a biggest learning opportunities. So anyway, that's, I hope I great

YY - AIBP: 27:55

advice, yeah, so I definitely feel that what you've mentioned is very true. So it's not about becoming having the male leadership skills, but rather, how do you be authentic to yourself? How do you then have the courage, the empathy, the authenticity to lead with, with passion, right? I think that's something that will resonate very strongly with the young women looking to to perhaps also adopt roles like you. Well, coming to the end of today's discussion, Malaysia is this year's ASEAN chair, right? Are there areas within Malaysia or the ASEAN region that you're personally really excited about?

Ko Sin - Sarawak Energy: 28:39

I think there's so many things to be excited at the change, at the change, at the verge of all these changes, it poses a lot of opportunities. So it's up to us. How do we want to harvest or, you know, benefits from this. Sarawa itself is also positioning as a regional hub for economic growth, particularly in renewable energy, digital economy, sustainability development. So this emerging growth opportunity include developments of stronger and attracting more investment and more sustainable in our area. I think I just read about from our mdec minister from Malaysia talking about the first digital digital First Nation. Those are very encouraging that's going to drive our digital economy and development right, promoting more digital transformation, especially people involved in this. This line, myself and yourself and those that is involved and, you know, listening to this so digital threat, you know, a lot of things going on at the moment. I don't know where to pin on, but I think I'm lucky in that sense, that I'm in the digital skill and I'm in the renewable energies expansions arena. I'm actually in the country, in the regions. A lot of promising growth and development. So I think that's where I see, if you ask me, where specific technology advancement, there's a lot as well. I mentioned a couple just now, right? You know, depending on your industry, like for us, digital twin makes sense. We we go all around ot convergence is essential to transform and modernize our grid operations and our plant generations, etc. Sustainability is also essential to our environment, so we need to be connected with the regulatory body work with multiple disciplinary, like minded organization and stakeholder to ensure we drive this transition and capitalize these opportunities. Yeah. Thank

YY - AIBP: 30:52

you so much, Madam coach, and I think you've given us a very rich insight into your role and driving sarawa energy towards its digital utility vision and also a sustainability and renewable energy leadership. Thank you very much for your time today, and I hope that we will work more together, especially towards your sustainability energy goals for Southeast Asia. Thank you very

Unknown: 31:20

much, Madam. Closing, thank you very much for the opportunity. Thank you.

YY - AIBP: 31:25

It was pretty easy though.

Unknown: 31:30

The questions,

YY - AIBP: 31:33

well, I think you did a great job and really giving that whole story, I really liked your part about how women leadership, how the new generation can look towards leading and be become authentic leaders also. So thank you very much for your time. Today, we'll reach out to Ava to see how we can help with like, say, your September areas, and we'll work a little bit more closely to bring aipp to Sarawak, yeah,

Ko Sin - Sarawak Energy: 32:05

for not, you know, be present in the advisory board, but I see AI VP growing and you guys, continues to stay on very good,

Unknown: 32:16

you know. So

Ko Sin - Sarawak Energy: 32:18

the ecosystem in this environment keep moving. I must say that I very hard for me to keep up with a lot of changes.

YY - AIBP: 32:26

I'm glad we are the champion that you see in Southeast Asia, and we aim to be better. So if there's any areas that you think to give us feedback on, let us know, and we hope to also bring our community closer to you. Excellent.

Unknown: 32:41

Thank you so

YY - AIBP: 32:42

much. Bye. Bye, thank you so much for the support. Thank you. No problem. Thank you. Take care.

Unknown: 32:51

Bye,

AIBP Intro: 32:54

we hope you've enjoyed the episode. For more information about business growth in the ASEAN region, please visit our website, www, dot IoT business, hyphen platform.com, you.