凉风清清

I straight away decided to go this summit because of the LCCF Assessment because I would like to know more about what have UM done in reducing the carbon footprint, since my final year project was about all residential colleague electricity carbon footprint of UM.

However reminder to all that I am regretted if my article offence anyone but I just share my thought and point of view.

At first I was amazed with the zero waste project as the project progress presented and we can see how it grow with all the programs such as the green bag scheme and overcome all the challenges especially when the value of the compost is just RM0.3 per KG! The idea having own farm just brilliant and smart solution. By the way I have a suggestion about composting of food waste although I didn’t visit the composting plant and understand the way of composting. Since doing composting, why not also composting on plants residue as well because besides of selling the compost fertilizer to farmer, still can sell to building maintenance as they need fertilizer to maintain landscape and especially Green Mark certified building due to mostly they required horticulture compost waste to score for the certification, although Green Mark certified in Malaysia mostly in Klang area and not many yet, but in Singapore is compulsory for all new buildings to have the green certification at least certified rating. However, you may need a certification to prove your compost. You may refer to the link for example:

 http://provinca-group.com/wp/?page_id=46

The second presentation about the biodiversity just widen my horizon about eco-tourism in Malaysia, and provide me a new tourist spot to travel at Johor beside of Kukup,haha..Hopefully those young tour guides will protect precious bio diversity at the kampong, really appreciate the natural beauty. By the way does the kampong near to the petroleum refining plant in Johor? Perhaps no I think because still can see the beautiful see horses and others and hopefully in future these area will be well protected.

The third presentation was my anticipation however not what I expected. Then I read again the title and I found out that I have misunderstood. Eventually this is a framework, so presentation was about the program on collecting data and showing the baseline of carbon dioxide of a city, so it will guide future new development and not to exceed the baseline (correct me if I am wrong). Therefore totally different from my expectation which anticipate seeing how UM reduce the carbon dioxide emission from electricity and etc.

 I do not understand about management of UM, but as an outsider who works in private sector, I saw an opportunity when knowing UM monthly electricity is RM2.2 million per month! Imagine that if I can help UM to save 10% of the monthly electricity consumption, then I will help UM to save up to RM2.64 million annually and continuous saving for future especially when the price of electricity increased. In addition, these are tax payer money and shall be optimize as well.

The simple method of saving electricity that I can suggest is changing T8 lamp to T5 lamp. Standard T5 lamps are 28 watts and standard T8 lamps are 32 watts. On a per lamp basis, it’s a 12.5% energy savings and it will have more saving a bit as T5 is using electronic ballast compare with T8 that using magnetic ballast. If the ROI is within 5 years, I think is reasonable to invest the money. In additional, motion sensor or photo sensor can be installed to the lighting if want to optimized certain area of lighting energy. Motion sensor can be installed in toilet, staircase while photo sensor can be installed at corridor or lighting that located at perimeter of windows. By the way, office lighting power budget shall be not more than 15 W/M².

Above suggestion about saving energy in lighting only, not mention about air-conditioner yet and if there is a water cooled chiller used in UM, there also a possibility to optimize it especially chiller that more than 15 years. By the way air-conditioner in UM Main Library is too cold, I am not sure does it still cold as last time and shall be using water cooled chiller right? If do so, then please have a chiller energy audit because I think there is a potential to optimize the chiller.

Finally, keep it up for your effort going green and spread among UM students :)

After the summit, I dug out my final year project to do some study about electricity usage in UM. If you interested you can click this  link to read.