Awareness of enterprises

It is seen that production enterprises is one of objects consuming much energy in the economy. If every enterprise endeavouring production improvement to increase the energy efficiency and saving, the stress on energy will be released. For example, with only the simple improvements such as oven repair, burner system replacement, refractory brick introduction etc. helped Pottery and Porcelain Enterprises in Bat Trang village reduced 25 – 30% of energy consumption, 30% of production cost, 24% of baking time, and increase the quality of products. Enterprise with the production improvement could save annually 200 million VND, increasing it’s competitiveness on market, and helping the enterprises to cope up with the inflation. However, the number of enterprises applying energy saving technology is still minor. The main reasons are the unclear mechanism, weak energy technical staffs in energy saving content, and lack of capital, causing the slow application of energy saving technologies.

In enterprises, where they are  producing energy consuming equipments for instance Rang Dong Light Source and Vacuum Flask Joint Stock Company (RALACO), they do not only practice energy saving measures to reduce its production cost but also improve technology to produce energy-saving equipments for society. In the changing economy context, RALACO selected the strategic products as the high quality and environmental friendly lighting equipments. Products of the Company are compact fluorescent lamp with 80% of energy consumption less than of incandescent lamp, and fluorescent lamp of T8- 36/18W, T5- 28/14W etc. with 30% of energy consumption less than of T10 fluorescent lamp. Especially, the special lighting set for school with standard design, dazzle-resistant, energy saving of 30 – 50%, higher luminance of 30% is manufactured. In 2007, RALACO carried out the project “Pilot lighting installation in school” invested by Vietnam Electricity Corporation (EVN), and funded by the Global Environment Fund through World Bank. In this project, RALACO designed and installed the efficient lighting system for 405 classrooms of 135 schools in 27 provinces and cities. The new lighting system meets requirement on luminance quality (on pupil desk and writing board) according to Vietnamese standard TCVN 7114:2002, and the building code QCXDVN 09:2005 to limit the ophthalmologic diseases of pupils. Total energy consumption of the new lighting systems for 405 classrooms increase 1.33 times but the luminance quality increases 4 times. The new lighting systems consume more energy because there used to be short of lighting equipment. 100% of classrooms used to fail to meet Vietnamese standards TCVN 7114:2002.

Society responsibilities

For many years, electricity sector with representative of Vietnam Electricity Corporation (EVN) have had much struggle to supply electricity nationwide and propagate to increase awareness of people and enterprises on electricity saving practice. EVN has also had supporting programs on price of efficient compact fluorescent lamps to people to replace incandescent lamps which have high energy consumption and energy waste etc. Meanwhile, there have been many frequent activities from society and related branches purposing on energy saving for every target people. To support enterprises in investment capital for energy saving content, there are some funds contributed by some home and international organizations  on environment and energy-saving to provide loans with concessionary interest rate or loan capital security, such as: energy efficiency projects in 5 sectors of brick, pottery and porcelain, pulp and paper, and food processing presided by Ministry of Industry and Trade has total investment loan secured up to 75%;  Environmental Protection Fund supports projects using green technologies and relating to energy saving content etc. However, small capital source of these funds and complicated application procedure discourage enterprises.

The biggest difficulty for enterprises is the low starting point, weak managerial level and planning and reporting ability of enterprises, said the Director of Project “Increase the energy efficiency in small and medium sized enterprises in Vietnam” Mr. Pham Ba Vinh. The important measure is to promote consultants training activities, which would not only help enterprises in reporting, accessing capital sources, but also select suitable technologies and increase the investment efficiency.

(Source: Tap chi Điện lực)-KNMA