The Environmental Management Training for Malaysia was organised by The Association for Overseas Technical Scholarship (AOTS) in collaboration with TEEAM to introduce know-how for the promotion of energy efficiency in factories in the manufacturing industry in Malaysia. It was a two week programme held between 25th September 2011 to 7th October 2011 at Yokohama Kenshu Center (YKC) Yokohama, Japan for the fourth time. TEEAM only managed to recruit seven trainees for the 2011 programme due to the earlier earthquake and tsunami disaster in Japan.

The key objective of the training was to enable its trainees to gain a deeper understanding of environmental management techniques and methods, and to promote energy efficiency in their own organisations. The training programme was very well structured to cover a wide area of applications to demonstrate the opportunities for energy efficiency and energy saving methods. Some areas covered were the high efficiency equipment produced by the Japanese and used in most of their homes, office buildings and factories.

Besides classroom lectures, some technical visits and study tours were made to some Japanese plants which have energy efficiency and environmental management programme.

The training also introduced new products that would reduce energy consumption. However the most important and critical aspect to learn from this training with respect to energy saving is the culture adopted by the Japanese in their quest to continue to reduce their overall energy consumption.

Since the world oil crisis in 1973, Japan being a country fully dependent on foreign petroleum experienced a severe increase in their energy cost which affected their economy tremendously. It was after this oil crisis that the Japanese fully appreciated the importance of energy and hence led to the beginning of the energy conservation culture in Japan. The Japanese then progressively began to reduce their dependence on fuel and moved on to alternative sources of energy.

The training was an eye-opener for all the trainees. In order to effectively conserve energy, Malaysia needs an energy saving culture and to properly understand this culture. There is no better way than to observe the ways of the Japanese as they have successfully integrated the act of saving energy into their everyday life. It no longer requires additional effort to reduce energy but rather it has become norm. One can have the most efficient equipment but if it is not switched off when unused, energy is still wasted.

With such programmme and exposure, Malaysians’ will be more aware of the importance of energy conservation and it is hoped that we will be less dependent on oil by the time our oil reserves are depleted in the near future.

A special note of thanks to Trainees, Mr Ian Cheong and Mr Desmond Yoo for the notes and photos contribution for this article. The trainees wish to thank AOTS and TEEAM for continuously organising such programme for the good of the industry and country.