Ha Giang province has reserves of major mineral resources, attracting many businesses to invest in mining and mineral processing. This industry brings great economic efficiency, increases revenues and contributes to poverty alleviation, job creation, and income improvement for local people.

Survey findings produced by research agencies and consultants show that energy saving potential in Vietnam is huge. In Ha Giang, energy savings potential is concentrated on mining and mineral processing industry. This is also a sector which consumes huge amount of fuels like electricity, coal, and petroleum.

These businesses have to pay dozens of billion dong for electricity and energy costs in their production. Therefore, to reduce the costs and product prices, these businesses will need to address the issue of energy saving to reduce energy consumption without affecting the capacity of the plants.

However, in many plants, in such positions as underground mining pits, mechanic workshops, metallurgy mills, sorting facilities, the old technology, outdated, energy-consuming equipment and machines are still in use. On the other hand, the investment costs for the new technology and equipment of high performance, energy savings, are relatively high. Besides, the workers' awareness of energy saving and efficiency in the production is not yet high. These are quoted as some basic reasons, causing losses and wastes of energy, increasing the production costs then the product prices.

To ensure the operational capacity, while minimizing the energy consumption, the enterprises need to have insight viewpoint and stronger mindset of the economical and efficient use of energy, especially the focus on energy management and energy audits.

Vietnam's goal is to cut down 5-8% of total energy consumption of the country, or from 11 million to 17 million TOE which is feasible in the next 3 years, and Ha Giang also takes actions to contribute to the achievement of national goal.

The main consuming enterprises would enjoy many benefits from energy savings through energy audits and energy management. These enterprises can identify areas of energy use which are found irrational and ineffective. Then, the enterprises can evaluate the potential of energy saving programs and then set up the overall scheme for energy savings.

Trong Tan