During Earth hour (from 20h30’ to 21h30’, Mar 27), Vietnam has saved 500,000 kilowatt-hours, equal to 450 million VND, a really large amount of money.

This community activity is symbolic of  environment protection and energy conservation. However, in order to consume energy more economically and effectively, administrators are planning to boost this program with concrete economy policies.

Energy efficiency is still low

According to the Steering committee of  National program on Energy Efficier and Conservation, Vietnam is facing up to a great challenge of energy balance as the energy demand is increasing every year at the speed of  2-digit number. Meanwhile, the reconnaissance and excavation of conventional and renewable energy resources are still limited. Therefore, the most possible solution now is conserve and consume the current energy resource effectively.

In fact, the energy efficiency enhancement has been run for a long time, but there are still many issues to be dealt with.

Although the energy conservation program has been widely performed with more than 100 projects and missions assigned to many sectors, businesses and households, its result in 2006 was just 135 KTOE (equal to 1,6 billion kilowatt-hours or 1 million oil barrels), 0,56% of total consumption. In 2007, this number was 347 KTOE, equal to 4 billion kilowatt-hours. In the early 2009, conservation rate has reached 3% of total consumption.

In sectors with great consumption, energy conservation has been executed in small scale areas.

Vietnam National Coal-Mineral Industries Group (VINACOMIN), for example, has run a program to reduce energy consumption by 6-10% in subsurface excavation, 2-5% in open excavation, 12% in purification to decrease total consumption from 9,15 to 8,9kWh per ton of coal. The Transport has merged energy conservation solutions into bridges and roads planning, used new energy resources for vehicles…

According to general assessment, the result was not as good as expected. The energy efficiency was still too low as in 2009, to increase GDP by 5%, electricity production was supposed to increase by more than 13,5%.

Concentrated conservation in great consumption households

To deal with this situation, the Steering Committee of National program has made a new plan with stronger solutions and more concrete policies in 2010. This plan will focus on great consumption businesses and households.

The second stage of this program will proceed in the whole country including energy conservation labelling for water-heaters, electric fans, electric ballast and compact bulbs, preparing to lable air-conditioners and refrigerators in 2010, trying to label 10 products to exceed target of National program (5 products from 2006 to 2010).

Management services are going to set and introduce step by step the standards of the Energy management system used in businesses in order to achieve the goal of application in all great consumption companies. Therefore, they may enhance the sense of  saving energy in these companies.

Especially, the program on energy efficier and conservation will be pushed up in industrial sectors, because based on energy reports, the potential of energy conservation in these sectors is very high (10-20% in cement industry, 15% in paper, 20% in steel and    chemicals…).

Electricity sector has been assigned to carry out pilot energy audit in some thermoelectricity factories, combine and execute synchronously energy saving solutions in 2006-2010 period. Coal-mineral sector will investigate and assess the energy consmption and potential of energy conservation of priority consumption households. Vietnam Cement Industry Corporation has created the “Outgas caloric utilisation” project to execute in 6 cement companies. Hoang Mai Cement will implement this project with generation capacity of 4.5MW. Steel sector and Shipbuilding industry will investigate and analyse energy consumption of companies and directly under factories, suggest energy saving solutions to some businesses…

The total amount of money used to support this program is about more than 60 billion VND. These breakthrough solutions are expected to raise the energy conservation rate to 3-5% in the next period.

By Minh Nguyen