The country’s energy demand will increase with the ever increasing population and industries.

According to Energy, Green Technology and Water Minister, Peter Chin Fah Kui, Malaysia’s energy demand may hit 28,500 MegaWatts (MW) by 2020 compared to 15, 656 MWs last year. This means there will be an increase of nearly 82 percent from our current electricity demand.

Such an increase in demand will cause an increase in usage of raw materials and eventually an increase in the cost of electricity as future fuel market prices will continue to surge. As a responsible consumer, every one of us would like to pay our own way and we would also want to ensure that electricity is used efficiently.

Do our nation’s policies reflect that?

First and foremost, industries that consume a lot of electricity are given a discount. This will actually promote wastage as it’s cheaper to waste electricity rather than being energy efficient.

The industry that reduces its energy consumption while maximising output should be rewarded, as their energy footprint per product is reduced. Industries that support ‘true’ energy efficiency approaches through real engineering solutions must also be promoted.

‘Power factor requirement’ enforcement must also be done by providing industrial and commercial consumers with proper guidance on how to improve their ‘power factor’ through usage of capacitor banks.

Secondly, energy efficiency labeling of electrical and electronic goods is currently very much lacking. Currently, locally-designed labeling is only available for refrigerators and industrial High Efficiency Motors (HEM).

What about the rest? Labeling and enforcement must be there to ensure that consumers can make a right choice to reduce their energy consumption.

Thirdly is the unification of energy sectors as a whole. Too many agencies are involved in the energy industry. There should be one agency that is in charge of energy from source, generation and supply to pricing. This agency must be able to connect to all related agencies to function and not just be a ‘stand alone’ agency.

Fourthly, the search for new resources for energy must be the current focus. Currently, here is no solid move towards ensuring energy efficiency at all levels. For example, is the steam being produced in all our power plants being fully utilised?

This utilisation ensures that energy conversion loss is reduced. There should be integrated power generation to supply excess steam that can be reused for processes.

This has been practiced in many countries even from many years ago to maximise utilisation of energy sources. Efficiency can be placed in products through innovations.

Even if energy demand is met with huge investments through many forms of engagements, no one would agree that it should be supplied to be wasted. There will never be a real cost benefit analysis then as we would be buying electricity to waste. We urge the government to tackle energy efficiency issues before moving forward with solving predicted energy crises.

Consumers can find more information on energy efficiency here. There will be more reports and guidebooks published periodically for consumers on the selection of suitable electrical and electronic products.

We are currently working on comprehensive ranking tabulation to rank products on selected parameters that will assist consumers to be more environmental friendly. This ranking will be produced once in every two months based on a selected type of product.

We urge all levels of consumers - domestic, industrial and commercial - to pledge to be efficient in the usage of our energy..

The writer is secretary-general, Water and Energy Consumer Association of Malaysia (Wecam).