Erica James-King
, Staff ReporterWESTERN BUREAU:
GOVERNMENT-CONTROLLED entities are not doing enough to save on energy, Dr. Raymond Wright, group managing director of the Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica (PCJ) has charged.
"The last time our annual energy bill was $2.3 billion. Now it's set to go to $3.7 billion and that's not just because of increase in fuel prices but because we are not using fuel wisely," he said in an interview with The Sunday Gleaner. "We are not producing enough to be able to spend foreign exchange of a great magnitude on imported energy."
Dr. Wright is predicting that public sector entities could cut their operational expenses by up to 35 per cent, by implementing energy-saving measures.
"Sector by sector we could save 10 per cent from conservation, and by refurbishing our buildings and industrial operations, we can save 30 per cent to 35 per cent in specific buildings and specific industries."
What further irritates the PCJ head is that not only is waste taking place, but also scores of public sector entities cannot even quantify the level of waste taking place. To make matters worse the entities cannot even quantify how much of their budget goes into addressing fuel needs.
"One of the problems, we are having is that if you talk to anybody in the industry, you will find that they know exactly what their labour costs are. But, if you ask them how much they are spending for energy, they don't know. And they don't even know the variations in their energy bills," commented the boss of the PCJ.
HIGH ENERGY USE
Observing that a number of public sector entities have an extremely high energy use as a percentage of their total cost, Dr. Wright said each entity could save substantially more if it introduced energy audits, energy efficient technologies and set efficiency standards for buildings. He pointed to the use of compact fluorescent lamps, solar heaters, energy-efficient air conditioning, wind energy and compressed natural gas, as viable options to the sources of energy now being used.
Meanwhile, the environment lobby group, the Northern Jamaica Conservation Associa-tion (NJCA) is underscoring the need for "radical changes in the public sector", in terms of fuel usage.
"We are seeing more and more of these huge fleet of sports utility vehicles, which burn a lot of fuel, and which are being utilised by the ministers and ministries," laments Wendy Lee, executive director of the NJCA.
Advocating for more efficient mass transportation services to be made available by the public sector, Ms. Lee said Govern-ment was not giving support to alternative energies with the implementation of tax waivers, incentives and research support.
"Solar energy should be utilised by more public sector companies, yet Government has not provided a tax incentive or tax waivers on solar energy, which would make it easier for public sector companies to use these gadgets," said the NJCA executive director. "Barbados can import solar heaters easily and we in Jamaica are burdened with duties if we try to import them."
Among the critics of the public sector's energy practices is the All Island Jamaica Cane Farmers Association (AICFA). The group is calling for sugar factories to generate their own electricity, as a way of cutting production costs and earning additional income.
Allan Rickards, executive member of the AICFA suggests, "If a sugar factory in Trelawny was generating its own power, it would lower the cost of the production of sugar, lower the cost of electricity, as well as be able to sell approximately 40 megawatts of electricity to the national grid."
He explains that Monymusk which has an irrigation pump system reliant on electricity from JPSCo, could save millions of dollars if it produced its own electricity. "We propose that cogeneration projects also be implemented at Frome, Mony-musk, Bernard Lodge and St. Thomas Sugar Company, with the aim of selling at least 100 megawatts of electricity to the national grid by the sugar industry, by 2006," said Mr. Rickards.
Meanwhile, the Cabinet Office which is helping to co-ordinate energy-efficient strategies under the public sector modernisation programme is painting a rosier picture than the critics, of attitudes and practices towards conservation in the public sector.
"We are aggressively pursuing energy saving solutions in the public sector," Ryan Evans, Senior Policy and Project Officer in the Cabinet Office told The Sunday Gleaner. "At this time we are updating our figures and are not able to say how much revenue has been saved from this exercise."
While explaining that some Government buildings have already been audited, Mr. Evans is predicting that energy audits of Government buildings in all ministries is expected to result in savings of $500,000 per annum.
