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Vietnam’s industry lags rest of world in efficiency of energy use
To produce one ton of steel, Vietnam’s factories use three times more energy than the world average. While Vietnam is still chronically short of electricity, power is being wasted in all economic sectors, from industrial production to construction to transport.
A rule of thumb used by the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MIT) is that in order to increase GDP by one percent, power output needs to increase by two percent. In developed countries, this ratio is less than 1:1.
The 1:2 ratio indicates that although Vietnam remains short of electricity, industrial users are wasting it. Nguyen Dinh Hiep, Deputy Director of MIT’s Science and Technology Department, said that the energy efficiency in Vietnamese industries is very low.
The energy efficiency of coal-run power plants, Hiep says, is from 28-32 percent, lower by 10 percent than in other countries. The efficiency of industrial boilers is just 60 percent, lower by 20 percent than the average level in the world.
Energy consumption per unit of output in key industries like steel and cement is also much higher than in developed countries. For example, to produce one ton of steel from ore, Vietnam’s factories need 13 million kilocalories, three times higher than the world’s average.
Nor does Vietnam’s energy intensity compare well to nearby countries. It is higher than Thailand and Malaysia by 1.5-1.7 times. Therefore, to generate the same value of products, Vietnam’s industrial production consumes an energy volume nearly double the regional average.
Industry consumes 50 percent of the electricity Vietnam produces and over half of other energy sources.
“In the past, lighting was regarded as the biggest electricity consumer and people wereexhorted to turn off lights. In fact, it is corporations and enterprises that are the biggest electricity wasters,” said Dr Nguyen Van Khai, Director of the Energy Saving Consultancy Centre.
Low efficiency is a result of obsolete technologies
Vietnam has nearly all kinds of energy. However, with demand growing at an annual rate of eight percent, MIT has forecast that Vietnam will become a net energy importer sometime between 2010 and 2020.
The ministry has called for energy-saving measures, saying that the cost of saving one kilowatt of electricity is much lower than the cost of generating it. The cement and steel industries, for example, can reduce energy consumption by 20 percent, while construction and transport could shed 30 percent.
“I went to a factory which had a 75 million dong electricity bill each month. (75 million dong is about $45,000.) I said I could show them how to save one to two million dong a day. However, they replied they would not implement the measures, because they cannot not give up the equipment they have purchased and they cannot repair the workshops they have built”,” Khai said.
Statistics show that 50 to 60 percent of Vietnamese enterprises are using obsolete or worn-out technologies. In many cases, enterprises are using newly purchased equipment but with obsolete technologies.
“Vietnamese enterprises always prefer cheap technologies. However, while they may save one dong today, they will waste one thousand dong later,” Khai said.
That explains why a lot of enterprises have rushed to import technologies from China which are cheap but consume lots of energy consuming and pollute the environment.
Phan Hung
vietnamnet
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