Energy efficiency called for to protect environment

Energy efficiency called for to protect environment

JAKARTA (JP): It is high time Jakarta's transportation and
industrial sectors as well as households used energy more
efficiently to help conserve the environment, an official said on
Wednesday.

"It's totally wrong to think that bigger and more advanced
technology will use more energy, either fuel or electricity,"
Emy Perdanahari of the Ministry of Mines and Energy's directorate
general of electricity and energy development said.

Speaking at a seminar on reducing energy costs through best
practices in buildings, Emy said it was not too late to reshape
people's way of thinking about energy consumption.

"Our opportunities to reduce energy use are widespread, with
or without further investment," she said.

People should be aware that if they were consuming more
energy, they should improve their productivity, Emy said, adding
that people here tended to use more energy but without their
productivity increasing proportionally.

"Apart from technical assistance, like the use of better
equipment in the transportation sector and industry, which can
help reduce fuel and energy consumption, the mentality of people
who operate the equipment is also important," Emy said.

She said that, in the long run, energy consumption in the
transportation sector was projected to fall 25 percent, in
industry 30 percent and in households 25 percent.

In the late 1970s households consumed most energy in relation
to their productivity but the trend later shifted to industry
followed by transportation in line with the country's development
and industrialization, Emy said.

"Now industry leads in the consumption of energy, followed by
the transportation sector and then households," she said.

Paul MacDonald from the British's government's Department for
International Development (DfID) said that he had spent four
years studying the use of energy in Jakarta for a project called
End Use Energy Efficiency.

"For the project, my government helps and assists Indonesia as
a growing developing country in Asia to lower the use of energy
as far as possible," he said.

MacDonald said he had also embarked on a survey in Jakarta and
Bandung -- as pilot projects -- in the three above sectors.

He said that in the near future, he would install measuring
equipment in some public vehicles to count how much energy they
had wasted and then compare it to the benefit they received from
the energy.

"It's important for our survey to obtain data but at the same
time we can make people believe us as they (vehicle operators)
can see the figures for themselves," he said.

It also emerged that Indonesian offices waste much more energy
than their neighbors in the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations.

In 1997 Indonesian offices used an average of 333 kwh per
square meter while the average for the region since 1992 was 246
kwh per square meter. (emf)