Vietnam meets five-year energy savings target

The national target programme on energy efficiency has achieved satisfactory results in the last five years, according to officials attending a seminar organised in Ho Chi Minh City on October 30.

Trinh Quoc Vu, director of the Department of Science, Technology and Energy Efficiency under the General Department of Energy, said that between 2011 and 2015 the volume of energy savings was equivalent to 5.96 percent of total energy consumption, while the national target set for the period was between five and eight percent.

One of the difficulties in carrying out the programme was increasing the awareness of people about energy savings. Today, more than 85 percent of Vietnamese citizens know about energy savings, including technologies and investment funds.

Vu estimated that energy efficiency in the industrial sector, which consumers more energy than any other sector, has the potential to increase between 20 percent and 30 percent.

Industry takes up more than 46 percent of the total energy consumption nationwide, while transport consumes roughly 30 percent and the rest is divided between the service sector and household use.

In order to exploit the potential, the World Bank and the Ministry of Industry and Trade are working on a 200 million USD project that will allow industrial enterprises to upgrade technology to save energy.

"It is expected that the project will be carried out in the first quarter next year," Vu said.

However, the project is just an initial step, because the capital demand for investing on energy savings in industry is huge.

The project will give priority to enterprises that consume high levels of energy, including cement, construction material, steel, paper, chemical, food processing and other sectors.

Huynh Kim Tuoc, director of HCM City Energy Conservation Centre, said HCM City's savings in the last five years contributed greatly to the national energy savings.

"In 2011, to create 1,000 USD of GDP in the city, we had to use 203 kilos of oil. Now, five years later, the oil usage (equivalent to creation of 1,000 USD) has fallen by eight percent, a significant amount of energy saved," Tuoc said.

HCM City contributes 21 percent of the city's GDP, which means the more energy HCM City saves, the better the country can reach its overall target.

This year, 952 enterprises in HCM City deployed solutions to save 43.4 million Kwh of electricity and 461,508 litres of oil a year.

The Ministry of Industry and Trade is creating a new programme on efficient energy usage that will be submitted to the government for approval. The target is to focus on solutions and energy efficiency models.-VNA