“I am happy that in the MECON project, we could bring together academic partners from five countries in the Mekong region plus the UK in order to research barriers to energy efficiency in low income households. On the basis of some 1700 household questionnaires, it helped us understand that although these countries are quite different, barriers to energy efficiency in households in the region are to some extent similar: lack of awareness, financial barriers and lack of minimum energy standards for consumer electric appliances. Also, energy efficiency in households receives least policy attention in all researched countries. This shows there's room for collaboration on government level in the region, i.e. developing common minimum energy standards or developing common approach to energy labels for household appliances.”
Dr. Milou Beerepoot, MECON project initiator and supervisor
“Raising awareness on energy efficiency has always been a challenging work, but the finding from MECON project shows us a new hope. The result shows that low-income households, which are usually not the primary target in energy policy, already have the knowledge on energy efficiency, and incorporate this into their decision on purchasing new appliances.
Although having willingness to pay for appliances with higher energy efficiency, financial constraint is still the main barrier for these consumers. If local governments could design a policy to support this, I believe we could save a lot on energy, use it for more productive activity, and prosper our economy.”
Beni Suryadi, Technical Officer for Policy Research and Analytics Programme, ASEAN Centre for Energy