If your doorbell rings one day, don’t be surprised to find a student outside, ready to share energy conservation tips with you.
The home monitoring visits are part of the Responsible Energy Advocates Programme (REAP), a sustainability programme developed by PowerSeraya in partnership with the National Environment Agency (NEA) and South West Community Development Council (CDC).
REAP is the first programme to engage with the people, public and private sectors in encouraging energy conservation.
According to PowerSeraya chief executive officer John Ng, REAP aims to train tertiary students to be energy advocates who can pass their newfound knowledge on to households, resulting in the conservation of both energy and money, in the form of reduced utility bills.
He said: “PowerSeraya believes in being a socially responsible organisation, which involves being committed to environmental stewardship for a sustainable future. One way we seek to achieve this is through the involvement of the community. We hope that through this programme, residents will become more aware of the need to manage and conserve energy and, in the process, voluntarily become responsible agents for the environment as well.”
PowerSeraya is no stranger to green initiatives, having been a member of NEA’s Corporate Environment Champion Programme since 2006. An NEA spokesperson said: “PowerSeraya worked with NEA to plan the syllabus for the REAP course, selected students from tertiary institutions and built their capacity to be energy advocates. Their role is to engage households with energy consumption levels above the national average to reduce energy use.”
REAP’s pilot run in 2010 was a success with 15 students recruited to learn about energy conservation, engage in project work and reach out to the community for a total of six months. During three of those months, they monitored participating households to ensure that their energy savings plans were successful. Three households eventually came on top: In line with NEA’s 10% Energy Challenge, they achieved more than 10 per cent energy savings during the monitoring period.
Ruskin Ong, 20, a Singapore Polytechnic graduate who participated in REAP, enjoyed the hands-on experience of energy auditing and the glimpse he received into the state of domestic energy usage.
Ruskin said: “I am glad that one of the households I helped managed to achieve energy savings of close to 14 per cent. I assisted by switching their existing light bulbs to energy-efficient ones and offered suggestions on changing their personal lifestyles, so they can seek to save even more energy.”
The number of students in REAP has been raised to 30 and plans are in the works to expand the programme. Said Mr Ng: “PowerSeraya plans to invest up to S$150,000 over the next five years in REAP with S$30,000 invested per year. This will cover 150 students who would be trained as energy advocates as well as benefit around 250 households over the five-year period.”
This translates to a grand total of 111,000Kwh of energy savings - or, in other words, enough energy to power 418 three-room flats for an entire month.
