Dennis Posadas, CAO Editor, discusses how energy efficiency is taking off in Asia, in the Asia Insight column of BusinessWeek.com
As Filipinos get ready for the summer months, most people who cannot afford to go on vacation just hide away in air-conditioned shopping malls. The problem is, with the lack of rain recently, cooling those buildings is going to be a major challenge. Because of the poor weather, many of the hydroelectric plants in the Philippines have not been operating at full capacity; therefore Mindanao and other islands are experiencing power shortages.
So this is a problem for those whose business depends on a steady supply of electricity, like the shopping malls that so many Filipinos patronize. The biggest of these mall operators, SM Prime Holdings (SMPH:PM), operates 36 malls in the Philippines and three more in the Chinese cities of Xiamen, Jinjiang, and Chengdu. All told, SM Prime has 4.9 million square meters of floor space that it needs to keep air-conditioned.
That uses up a lot of energy, so SM started making its malls energy efficient as far back as 1998, a company spokesperson said in an e-mail response to questions. SM says it has spent more than $6 million to replace older, less energy-efficient equipment. Smart climate controls for air-conditioning (to compensate for fluctuating energy demand during night and day) have allowed SM to save more than 50 million kilowatt-hours a year. Green and sustainable design methods, including the replacement of older incandescent lamps with compact fluorescent lamps, the use of skylights, and the use of foliage are some of the methods it uses to cut energy consumption. For 17 of its larger SM Supermalls with the energy-efficient air-conditioning systems, it estimates the savings at 67,165 megawatt-hours. Using 2007 as a baseline, the company was able to save 18,584 megawatt-hours in 2008 with an equivalent CO2 reduction of 15,000 metric tons.
More companies in Asia need to follow SM's lead in focusing on ways to use energy more efficiently. Renewable energy, with its images of wind turbines, seems to bring to life the romance of the lead character from Miguel de Cervantes's novel Don Quixote. But one cannot say the same of renewable energy's close but less sexy cousin, energy efficiency.
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