Melanie Yip, 938LIVE Channel NewsAsia 17 May 09;
SINGAPORE: Starting June, South East CDC will partner the National Environment Agency (NEA) to launch a district-level plan aimed at cutting domestic electricity consumption by 10 per cent.
Through the "10 per cent Energy Challenge at South East" plan, home owners will conduct their own home energy audits to save electricity.
Under this programme, NEA will train an initial batch of 60 residents to identify wasteful energy consumption habits by conducting their own home energy audits, and make simple steps to reduce their household energy.
They will each be given an energy auditing kit containing useful information on energy efficiency, as well as an audit checklist during the four-month training.
Following the completion of the training, these residents can audit up to some 500 households in the South East district within a year.
Deputy general manager of community projects at South East CDC, Kia Siang Wei, said in view of the downturn, every cent matters, and by using energy wisely, residents could save money and fight climate change.
He said: "We worked very closely with our grassroots organisations to identify these volunteer energy auditors. For this pilot run, many of them are our grassroots leaders who volunteered to be the auditors.
"So we hope that this first group will be able to spread the message and encourage more people to take up this programme.
"A majority of the flats in this area fall into the three-room flat or larger, and this is an area where we think we can promote energy conservation at this type of flats."
- 938LIVE/yt
