Campaign promotes saving of energy

By Ibrahim Kasita
The minister of Energy, Irene Muloni launched the Energy Week with a call to Ugandans to adopt energy saving practices.

The week aimed at making the public understand the role of energy saving in their lives.

This will facilitate the awareness campaigns in the energy sector and convey a clear message of the role played by energy to bring about sustainable development. Engineer Muloni disclosed the strategy on Tuesday, while launching the Energy Brand and the Energy Week in Kampala.

“Our theme is in line with the United Nations General Assembly’s declaration of 2012 as the International Year of Sustainable Energy for All,” she said.

“Access to modern affordableenergy services in developing countries is essential for the achievement of the internationally agreed development goals,” she emphasised.

The minister said it is for this reason that the Government has made the energy sector a priority in the development agenda.

“We need adequate and reliable energy to bring about the social and economic
development of our nation,” Muloni added.

The Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development is using awareness materials, promotional materials and publications during its campaign.

“We would like everybody to appreciate the critical role energy plays in sustainable development,” the minister pointed out.

The industrial sector uses about 60% of the total generation electricity. Studies indicate that there is a considerable scope to save energy in this sector of over 10% by implementing no cost to low cost measures.

“If that waste of energy was tapped it would translate into a saving of over 30 MW of power which would save Government over $90m, enough to put up a plant to generate the same amount of energy,” James Baanabe, the commissioner in charge of Energy Efficiency, said.

“Energy efficiency resource happens to be perfectly clean, remarkably cheap, surprisingly abundant and immediately available,” he said.

Energy resource that remains untapped if utilized would save the industry unnecessary cost while relieving Government part of the burden of additional generation capacity in the short term. Baanabe said it is government policy to promote efficient utilisation of energy in all sectors of the economy.

“All over the world, energy demand as well as energy costs have been on the rise resulting in more stress put on the environment,” he observed.

“This has led to the introduction of tougher legislation which has necessitated the development of efficient technologies.”

It is for that reason that energy management has gained prominence in recent years as one way to promote sustainable utilisation of the scarce energy resources while mitigating against impacts of climate change.

The ministry implemented a Demand Side Management programme that involved energy auditing and energy efficiency investments in about 200 public institutions.

The programme has realised an annual 10GWh energy saving in the benefiting institutions.

About 800,000 Compact Fluorescent Lamps were distributed to domestic consumers saving energy of about 30MW. The programme cost about $1.5m.

It would have cost Government $100m to put up a plant that would provide the same power.

Under the Energy for Transformation programme, the ministry is implementing a power factor correction programme through the Private Sector Foundation.

This has proved to be very successful realising a demand reduction of 3.4 MVA (about 3MW) on the national grid from 10 industries only.

The ministry has facilitated various energy audits in a number of industries. “To sustain and promote such efforts, Government is will soon introduce an appropriate legal framework.

In this framework, the Efficiency and Conservation Law will be tabled in Cabinet before the end this year,” the commissioner said.

The theme “Energy for Sustainable Development” was chosen to recognise the role energy plays in sustainable development.

In line with the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) the energy sector has to fulfil the following aspects:

To reduce extreme poverty and hunger. Modern energy services help reduce the share of household income spent on cooking and lighting as well as reducing postharvest losses.

In the industrial sector, energy enables enterprise development as well as powering industries and machinery to create jobs and increase productivity.

In the education sector modern energy services enable the provision of light for reading or studying beyond daylight to improve performance of students.

On gender equality and women’s empowerment, modern energy frees women’s time from survival activities, allowing opportunities for income generation.

In the health sector, modern energy enables provision of better medical facilities for maternal care, allowing medicine refrigeration, equipment sterilisation and safe disposal by incineration.

On environmental sustainability, modern energy services boost agricultural productivity, increasing quality instead of quantity of cultivated land and reducing deforestation.

In the Information Communication Technology (ICT) sector, energy plays an important role in provision of energy to power their systems.

To increase access to modern energy services, Government has been promoting the rural electrification programme whose target is to achieve coverage of at least 10% in the rural areas by the end of 2012.

The programme is targeting district headquarters, production areas to support agricultural modernisation, socially desirable areas like schools, health centres, water supply facilities and trading centres which provide services to the rural population.

In the area of energy efficiency, a number of programmes are being implemented.

They include dissemination of efficient technologies such as, energy savers, improved charcoal stoves, household cook stoves and institutional cook stoves which use less than 50% wood fuel compared to the traditional cook stoves.