Armed with new knowledge, Sri Lanka’s leading industries take bold steps to cut energy use

In the past two years, Sri Lanka has suffered unprecedented fuel shortages and a spike in electricity prices. In response, industries are doubling down on their efforts to curb energy use, production costs and greenhouse gas emissions. To achieve this, representatives from some of the country’s biggest industrial energy users, relevant government departments and energy consultants joined a one-year long internationally recognized energy management systems (EnMS) course, which they completed last month. To learn more about the course, the results and its long term impact, we spoke with Alfred Hartzenburg, one of the lead trainers from South Africa.

What was particularly unique about the Sri Lanka EnMS training you’ve just led?

Alfred Hartzenburg: I’ve been doing this EnMS training since 2012, and I really didn’t think that I could still get excited about it. I’ve done it not only in South Africa, but beyond and I’ve supported many companies in achieving ISO 50,001 certification¹. What was quite interesting about the Sri Lanka situation is that, like in South Africa in 2008 and 2010, Sri Lanka had seen a shortage of fuels. Some companies were using bunkering oil in the boilers just to keep the factories going and, ultimately switching back to fuel oil and then having to clean and repair the damage caused by bunkering oil. Electricity tariffs had also more than doubled in a very short period of time.

So, it was that kind of a knee-jerk reaction that I think may have solidified the spirit that we witnessed from the candidates when we arrived in Sri Lanka for our first training. There was an exceptionally high level of interest. There were 46 companies represented, which is way above what we normally have in an EnMS expert training. In South Africa for example these trainings can take place with 12 to 15 companies.

So we started the training with 69 candidates, split into two groups. And within those two groups, we had 11 candidate manufacturing plants. [These are companies that agree to allow trainees to practice what they learn during the course of the training in their manufacturing facilities and serve as Energy Management System demonstration plants to encourage its wider adoption in Sri Lanka.]

What does the course entail and how do you evaluate the trainees?

This is a 12-month training split into classroom and field work, as well as reporting and practice, or implementation. For the first time, we prioritized the practical work by allocating 60 per cent of the overall evaluation score to what we call the practical continuous assessment criteria. We looked at whether trainees attended every webinar, whether they participated in the webinars, whether they contributed to Basecamp, whether they submitted the energy performance report. The three and a half hour written open book exam only contributed 40 per cent to the overall score. And we did that because we wanted to eliminate those really sharp academics in the program who come and skip everything else and simply come and sit for the exam and ace it and to shift the focus to the practical implementation requirements and challenges.

We also set 70 per cent as the minimum pass mark for both the continuous assessment and the exam. We set the bar high intentionally because if we are going to confer expert status to any of the graduates from this course, I want to be confident that I would have no reservations recommending them to support a [manufacturing] plant in implementing an energy management system, or the National Cleaner Production Centre (NCPC) and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) in Sri Lanka by becoming a national trainer. I want to be certain that they will do a great job.

How did this cohort perform and how does it compare to other courses you’ve imparted elsewhere?

Out of the 57 candidates who sat for the exam, almost 79 per cent passed outright. Let me put that into perspective: Since 2011, including in South Africa, the best pass rate we achieved in the first year was about 40 per cent. In fact, there were some countries where UNIDO implemented the industrial energy efficiency project that had no successful results. I think the commitment I witnessed could be the driver behind these really excellent results.

What were the most significant results of this training?

What was really good was to see how the lessons learned in the 11 candidate plants were replicated in the other 35 industrial plants represented by the 69 candidates, with some incredible results. There was one particular rubber company representative who applied to his own plant some of the lessons learned from the work implemented in the plant he was assigned to. He achieved savings of a million kilowatt hours simply by implementing very basic low hanging measures.

Many of the other companies have also achieved significant savings. In total the energy management plans they implemented as part of the course have already saved 7,200 metric tonnes of GHG emissions, which is the equivalent of taking more than 1,000 petrol cars off the road for 1 year. That said, in the first year, it’s not really about savings as much as it is about bedding down the disciplines and the culture of managing energy in a different way. We have seen incredible recognition from the leaders in most of the 11 candidate plants. In one particular case, in a large international textile group, the energy manager who attended the training was promoted as a result of the good work he had done in this area.

Are there any other longer term impacts you believe this training will have?

Thanks to the training, we now have a database of Sri Lankan successes [in energy saving efforts] that we can use to recruit other companies that were not part of the first year. And, to showcase these achievements to the government and draw on support for creating the conditions and incentives within government policy that encourage companies to adopt energy saving measures. For example, I was really impressed by the renewable energy program in Sri Lanka where the feeding tariffs were so good that it encouraged many of the plants we worked with to start implementing rooftop solar PV systems, not only to meet their own requirements, but to feed into the grid. These are the kind of win-win policies, incentives and legislation that are necessary and conducive to driving the successes in industry.

How does this training contribute more broadly to Sri Lanka’s efforts to reduce GHG emissions and curb the impacts of climate change?

Without the understanding of what energy management systems bring and the awareness that it creates within industry, we have business as usual, which means continuing to burn fossil fuels and polluting the air. Energy management systems focus the attention of industrial plants’ senior management, operators and everyone else on the importance of not only conserving energy, but implementing measures that can save energy and mitigate [GHG] emissions. If through this work we can see a shift from using fossil fuels and fuel oil – that are extremely expensive – to more cost effective and far cleaner fuels, then I think that journey [to reducing GHG emissions] starts.

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Meet some of the trainees of the EnMS training featured in our Energy Savers campaign and read the press release about the graduation ceremony.

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1. The ISO 50001 Standard provides a practical way to improve energy use, through the development of an energy management system (EnMS).