Many businesses have adapted new policies and applied new methods to cut the power bill and raise energy efficiency amid rising power prices and inadequate supply this year.
Since power costs make up about 30 percent of total costs, Big C Supermarket chain last year begun adopting new green policies by replacing old electrical devices with power-saving ones, installing power monitoring devices to optimize power allocation and operating its cold storage facilities at night to save spending on power and raise power efficiency.
The cold storage facilities with large ice cubes created during the nights also help regulate the air conditioning systems during daytime.
The new policies have helped save around 20 percent of power consumption over normal operation, thus (allowing the creation of) favorable pricing policies for commodities at the supermarkets, Duong Quynh Trang, director of external affairs told Tuoi Tre.
The Hanoi-based livestock company Duc Viet, which sells 120,000 pigs to the market a year, is installing a German-made system generating power, heat and fertilizer from biogas.
Its new biogas plant can process 100,000 tons of organic wastes a year to generate 32 million kWh of electricity that is sufficient for the whole livestock facility. The plant can also produce organic fertilizers.
The German partner joined the project by offering the technologies to receive CO2 emission certificates, which will be sold in emission-trading schemes to mobilize capital.
The rest will be covered by the company, the company’s director Mai Huy Tan told Tuoi Tre.
The company is planning to link up with other European partners and farmers in the Mekong Delta to boost the biogas project by making use of a great volume of agriculture waste of the region.
Economist Pham Chi Lan told Tuoi Tre that Vietnamese firms have previously paid less attention to energy conservation by importing and using obsolete and energy-costing machinery and technologies, so now it is a good time for them to revise their energy consumption policies and strategies.
HCMC authorities have asked trade and service operators to cut in half of their electricity consumption on outdoor advertising and decoration lights from 5pm-9pm daily. It also asked state agency offices and office building operators to consider using natural sunlight and wind to conserve electricity consumption on light and air conditioners.
