Fresh energy

In tandem with the growing need for energy efficiency and environmental protection, China is in critical need of energy- management-related expertise, which is essential for any practical solution to its environmental problems.

Yet the complexity of the technical know-how required - including energy consulting, design and auditing - means professional and specialty training would be the prerequisite to helping the country achieve its goal to reduce energy consumption per unit of GDP by 20 percent within the 11th Five-Year Plan (2006-2010).

This vast market potential has already attracted international players in the energy field. Following an agreement signed between German Energy Bureau and China's State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs (SAFEA) in March this year, which opened a joint training program for China's energy managers, the Association of Energy Engineers (AEE) from the United States has also brought its expertise to China.

The program trains Certified Energy Managers (CEM) through a five-day training and examination program. Since its inception in 1981, the CEM credential has become widely accepted and used as a measure of professional accomplishment within the energy management field in the United States and abroad.

Jointly launched by AEE and SGS-CSTC Standards Technical Services Co, Ltd under SGS Group, the world's leading inspection, verification, testing and certification company, this training program targets energy management personnel from Chinese enterprises and requires a minimum entry level of related education and work experience. It is expected to bring Chinese energy managers to a level of competence that allows them to be productive in the energy engineering area.

"The importance of this training program is large for China," says Bruce Colburn, director of the AEE CEM China Team. "Although you have very capable and trained engineers in general, energy efficiency is a specialty area which we find requires additional enhanced training."

"(We think) CEM is the vehicle to use to bring rapidly a high level of understanding on behalf of the Chinese technical community," he says.

Jiang Jianxin, electric supervisor from Shanghai Science and Technology Museum, says the technical know-how of energy management is what Chinese enterprises need most in their current move to reduce energy consumption driven by mounting energy costs.

"Many Chinese enterprises think that if you want to cut down energy consumption, you need to invest a lot in buying energy efficient equipment, but that's not true. Energy conservation relates more to a proper level of management. Even if you have very efficient equipment in the first place, their efficiency will get impaired as time goes by. So what you need basically is how to control costs through technical renovation and proper management." Jiang tells China Business Weekly, adding that he himself is very interested in enrolling in such a training program.

"We have been progressing on an annual four percent reduction in energy consumption in the past four years through consistent energy management," says Jiang. "But it would be highly desirable if we could get more systematic training."

According to Zhou Jichao, energy analyst from the AEE CEM China team, SGS and AEE are currently running the first of what they hope would be many hundred such training programs in China, which would be extended into fields such as energy auditing as well. The benefits, says Zhou, can be simply defined in terms of cash savings in that the training program could help cut energy consumption by 5 to 15 percent on average.

"It is not unusual for people after the training to go back to their factories or commercial enterprises and identify and help implement low cost energy saving measures that can more than pay for the cost of the training program itself within weeks. The program pays for itself and pays rapidly." Colburn explains.

According to Shen Longhai, director of the Energy Service Company (ESCO) Committee of China Energy Conservation Association, China lacks professional talents in energy management in general. Although there are a lot of energy related training programs in China, the country still does not have its own official energy manager certificate competitive enough to gain national recognition.

"China needs to accelerate the cultivation of energy managers in terms of energy planning, auditing, measurement and verification as the key to promoting the implementation of energy efficiency projects throughout the country. Education is always the first step to get the public to realize that energy conservation brings long-term returns-on-investment apart from immediate environmental benefits," Shen notes.

China is nevertheless stepping up efforts to raise the level of energy efficiency. In the newly issued Law of the People's Republic of China on Conserving Energy starting to take effect on April 1, 2008, key energy-consuming companies are asked to submit their energy consumption reports each year and have their energy management personnel attend related training programs.

Meanwhile, the country is making headway in supporting the development of ESCOs as the vehicle to help more companies in the industrial sector to reduce their energy bills and carbon footprints , Shen says.

With a comprehensive service package including energy efficiency analysis, project design, installation and construction, and M&V of energy savings, ESCOs generally assist energy consuming enterprises in achieving energy conservation with both retrofitting plans and new construction projects. It is carried out through the Energy Performance Contracting (EPC) mechanism, which is a financing technique that uses cost savings from reduced energy consumption to repay the cost of installing energy saving equipment.

Statistics from China Energy Conservation Association show that the amount of energy saved from EPC projects in China has increased from 560,000 tons of coal equivalent in 2003 to over 3 million in 2007.

"However, more preferential policies from the government are still needed to help finance those small and medium sized ESCOs in their efforts to disseminate energy saving technologies to commercial enterprises," Shen says.

(China Daily 09/01/2008 page5)