Energy saving pathway is illuminated

For the last five years, 59-year-old Nguyen Truong Son has followed the same routine. Every afternoon, Son uses a loudspeaker in his village’s community hall to broadcast songs and even sings for his neighbours. No, he’s not practicing for this year’s Vietnam Idol, Son is highlighting the benefits of energy saving.  

Being a member of the Energy Saving Promotion Team in The My commune of Ho Chi Minh City’s Cu Chi district, Son’s singing is a call to prayer for his locality, beckoning them in for a  secular sermon on reducing energy usage.

Apart from this daily duty, Son is also spearheading a community project. Between 2008 and 2011, Son visited the 750 households in My Khanh A hamlet to convince local dwellers to contribute money to a public lighting project, which aimed to install compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) for outdoor lighting.

“It was not easy work at all,” Son recalled, referring to the poor living conditions of most local residents, who earn a meagre income from agricultural production.

“However, we finally succeeded and all the roads in our hamlet are lit every night with CFLs,” he boasted.

The success of the project isn’t measured by the funds raised, but by the improved security in the locality since the street lights became active. This benefit is now similarly being enjoyed by the neighbouring hamlet of My Khanh B where an identical initiative has followed.

“We are all happy to contribute to this initiative because it has helped ensure social order and prevent thievery,” said the 65-year-old Nguyen Van Nuong in My Khanh B.

Both Son and Nuong are aware that CFLs are 8-10 times higher energy efficient than the incandescent bulbs they used before. Inspired by the initiative, both have replaced their own old bulbs with CFLs and persuaded other villagers to follow suit.

“Many households in my hamlet now use CFLs,” said Son.

“So do households in our hamlet,” said Nuong.

Both confirmed that they had made great savings on their monthly electricity bills, although they also admitted that the new lamps are expensive.

Whatever the causes behind their motivation and enthusiasm, the duo and their neighbours have benefited from, and also contributed to, the success of the nationwide Vietnam Energy Efficient Public Lighting (VEEPL) project which deals with ineffective public lighting systems.

Phan Hong Khoi, chairman of the Science and Technology Council under Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology (VAST) which implements VEEPL, said that public lighting in Vietnam was characterized by low efficiency light sources housed within poorly designed luminaries and installed in inappropriate locations, with 85 per cent of street lighting provided by obsolete technology – either mercury or incandescent lamps – and installed without proper planning or engineering analysis.

In 2005, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) reported that Vietnam’s public lighting systems, including street lights as well as schools and hospitals, were neither economical nor environmentally friendly.

“Ineffective public lighting systems and inefficient energy use by a significant part of the population have aggravated the overall situation, contributing to the country’s ever increasing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions,” Khoi said.

VAST data made in 2008 indicated that 25.3 per cent of Vietnam’s commercialised electricity output were used for lighting purposes, compared to the world’s average rate of 19 per cent. Almost half of the energy was consumed for lighting residential areas, more than one third for commercial areas, and nearly one fifth for industrial areas and other purposes.

The Ministry of Science and Technology (MoST) estimated that Vietnam could potentially reduce its power consumption by up to 30 per cent, if it took action on lighting issues.

Furthermore, the UNDP commented that as Vietnam continued to develop rapidly, public lighting was expected to grow quickly as well. “Without effective intervention, Vietnam is likely to be burdened with a public lighting sector that wastes public resources and contributes disproportionately to national GHG emissions inventory,” it reported.

Right project, right time

The $15.3-million VEEPL project, partly financed by the Global Environment Facility – an independent financial organisation helping developing countries fund programmes and projects to protect the global environment – and the UNDP, commenced “at the right time” to deal with energy consuming technologies adopted in Vietnam’s public lighting sector, Khoi said.

Vietnamese partners involving in the project included the MoST, the Ministry of Construction, the People’s Committees of Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and Quy Nhon City, and Hanoi University of Technology. Five companies including Hapulico, Schreder Vietnam, Viettronics Dong Da, Vinakip and Dien Quang Lamp, and some universities in Hanoi also joined VEEPL.

From December 2005 to June 2011, the project encouraged authorities and ordinary people to apply and develop energy saving public lighting models throughout Vietnam based on the successes of 15 pilot high-efficiency lighting models in Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi and Quy Nhon.

Born amid growing concerns over rising GHG emissions in Vietnam due to increasing energy consumption and rapid urbanisation, VEEPL also aimed to help transform the nation’s lighting industry towards producing and adopting high-quality energy efficient lighting products, including CFLs, which in turn led to the reduction of both power demand and the associated GHG emissions from power production. VEEPL has also helped develop a market for power-saving products in Vietnam.

In Ho Chi Minh City, for example, four power-saving public lighting models and a municipal public lighting control centre were built during 2006-2011. “With more than 12,000 power-saving lamp sets installed thanks to VEEPL, each year the city could reduce its power usage for public lighting by 38.37 per cent, and enjoy a corresponding cut of 184.4 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent, while still ensuring lighting efficiency,” said Ho Chi Minh City Public Lighting Company chairman Tran Trong Hue.

In south-central Binh Dinh province’s Quy Nhon city, VEEPL helped install 2,050 sets of power-saving lamps and upgraded 30 kilometres of street lights during the same period. “As a result, the city can annually save 40,045 kilowatt-hour (kWh) and cut 176.31 tonnes of CO2 equivalent,” said a local report on the project.

VEEPL’s first blueprint calculated that around 398 million kWh would be saved and 171,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent would be reduced nationwide from 2006 to 2011. In reality, the results were nearly double these estimates, with 674.4 million kWh saved and 290,000 tonnes of CO2 cut throughout the country thanks to the implementation of VEEPL.

The project estimated that if 20 million 60 watt  incandescent bulbs were replaced with 20 million 11 watt CFLs, Vietnam would save some 783 megawatts annually, equal to the power consumption of 11 northern provinces. Furthermore, 550,000 tonnes of coal would be saved, and 120,000 tonnes of CO2, 15,400 tonnes of sulfur oxide, 5,500 tonnes of nitrogen oxides and 176,000 tonnes of dust would be reduced every year.

Thanks to the project, the participating companies have increasingly expanded their manufacturing high efficiency lighting products, including fluorescent T8s, compact lamps, transformers and reflectors for the local market and export. Their aggregate power-saving lamp output had reportedly skyrocketed from 500,000 in 2006 to 127 million in 2007, 37.5 million in 2008, 41.1 million in 2009 and 46.3 million in 2010.

Made-in-Vietnam power-saving lamps have been exported to the US, Japan, France, China, South Korea, Belgium, Cuba and Venezuela with help from VEEPL, according to the project’s national senior technical advisor Nguyen Thi Bac Kinh, who said “this heightens Vietnam’s contribution to the global efforts to cut GHG emissions”.

Yet Khoi stressed that the biggest success of VEEPL was its direct involvement in shaping the government’s “urgently needed” policies and legal documents on efficient lighting. Typical outcomes included the Vietnam Urban Lighting Development Orientation to 2025 dated July 2010, governmental Decree 79/2009/ND-CP dated September 28, 2009 on urban lighting management and its guiding Circular 13/2010/TT-BXD.

VEEPL has also helped the Ministry of Construction to enact Decision 13/2008/QD-BXD on integrating lighting plans in cities and provinces’ construction master plans. All cities and provinces in Vietnam have received VEEPL’s support in tailoring local policies on lighting system management to comply with Decree 79.

VEEPL also collaborated with the ministries of Science and Technology, Construction, Industry and Trade to develop national standards for lighting products, including TCVN 7896, TCVN 7897, TCVN 8248, TCVN 8249, and TCVN 8250.

Also the Ministry of Industry and Trade built and implemented the national programme on labeling energy efficiency for high efficiency lighting products thanks to VEEL.

“These policies and legal documents have provided the foundation for central and local authorities to manage and coordinate public lighting systems towards saving energy, reducing CO2 emissions and therefore creating a greener environment,” Khoi said.

Many a mickle makes a muckle

Khoi claims that these remarkable outcomes could not have been achieved without the combined efforts and hard work of ordinary people like Son and Nuong in Ho Chi Minh City’s Cu Chi district. In return, the localised benefits enjoyed by these people and the national success of VEEPL have prompted the government to initiate a similar project.

The government has asked the UNDP to support a $6 million project on local development and promotion of high-brightness white light-emitting diode (HBWLED) technology. Dossiers for this 2013-2017 project were submitted to the steering committee of the Global Environment Facility based in New York in June 2013.

The project will involve Vietnam-based manufacturers Ralaco, Dien Quang and FawooKidi cooperating in the fields of technology transfer, demonstration support programmes and HBWLED lamp manufacturing.

Kinh added that the companies’ products would also be exported, “amplifying Vietnam’s contribution to the global efforts to cut GHG emissions.”

Son and Nuong in Cu Chi district, however, don’t think that big. Encouraged by their own realistic and tangible goals, both commit to continuing their contribution, in both labour and material terms, to the energy-saving mission.

“I don’t really understand what GHG emissions mean and don’t think that my contribution is so significant,” said Nuong. But he said his family had been able to save around 20 per cent of the household’s electricity bill each month since he replaced his bulbs with power-saving lamps.

Son also said he did not have to spend money for indoor lighting despite several power price hikes since the replacement of the bulbs.

Being aware of the higher costs of installing CFLs compared to incandescent bulbs, which make it hard for many in his village to afford, Son said he would personally lend money, equal to around four month’s worth of his family’s income, to any of his neighbours who wished to replace the bulbs.

“I continue to patiently convince everyone in my hamlet to use power-saving lamps,” he said.