Energy efficiency, conservation crucial to APEC economies

CEBU CITY – Energy efficiency and conservation is crucial to sustaining the growth of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) member economies, including the Philippines, which is now trying to come up with a master-plan that will support energy saving programs in the country.

During the opening of 46th Experts Group on Energy Efficiency and Conservative Meetings (EGEEC) held yesterday, Energy undersecretary Donato Marcos said the Philippines recognizes the importance of addressing energy issues relevant to economic growth and development.

The meeting is part of APEC third senior officials meeting (SOM3) currently being held in Cebu.

“The Philippines reaffirms its commitment to the APEC’s unified goal of building strong partnerships towards economic development as we are optimistic that with APEC support, our vision of harmonization and connectivity will come to excellent productive realization,” Marcos said in his welcome remarks.

“For our part, the Philippines has come up with an energy efficiency roadmap and its corresponding energy efficiency and conservation action plan that we will implement from 2016 to 2020,” he added.

This roadmap, according to him, is envisioned to be the master-plan of the Philippine Department of Energy (DOE) in achieving energy efficiency and conservation programs and activities to higher levels, as well as define the role of the government in coming up with a range of measures for this goal.

In the action plan, the DOE’s identified energy intensive sectors are transport industry, commercial and residential buildings, and the crosssectoral bodies.

Marcos also said that further discussions on energy efficiency can also help APEC member economies come closer to the vision and further define what issues it needs to address in the roadmap it is going to draft in the next APEC meeting to be held in October this year.

“For this 46th meeting, we have identified priority areas for discussion as stated in the agenda namely energy efficiency and best practices in buildings; harmonization of energy efficiency test methods for refrigerators in the APEC region; harmonization of standards and enhancing technical capacity in measurement and verification of energy savings of projects and the like; vehicle fuel efficiency labeling and re-information schemes; energy efficiencies, policies and programs; and energy intensity and renewable energy goals, among other things,” he specified. (MBM)