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Bianca Mlilo Business Reporter
THE Zimbabwe Energy Regulatory Authority (Zera) plans to introduce new energy saving regulations that guarantee mandatory audits on consumers for purposes of energy efficiency. Zera chief executive officer Engineer Gloria Magombo told Business Chronicle that the regulations would only come into effect after training industry on energy efficiency.“We did an energy audit last year and as part of the energy audit we realised that there is a potential for savings from different companies and households, domestic, industry and mining sectors,” said Eng Magombo.
“We also identified what they need to do to improve efficiency. So what we’ve done is that we want to introduce regulations for mandatory audits to be done with proper plans for implementation of energy efficiency measures just like Kenya.”
The Kenyan Energy Regulatory Commission, whose mandate is to regulate the electrical energy, petroleum and related products, has employed a similar strategy under which companies are fined if they exceed their allotted energy limit.
“We’ve taken a stance whereby we start by capacitating industry on how to do those energy efficiency measures and so far we’ve trained about 50 engineers from different companies who will then be used to implement the first phase of the programme before we bring in regulations.
“The regulations will then make it mandatory for them to audit and implement efficiency measures,” Eng Magombo said.
The Zimbabwe Energy Regulatory Authority (Zera) is a statutory body established by the Energy Regulatory Authority Act and is mandated to regulate the procurement, production, transportation, transmission, distribution, importation and exportation of energy derived from any energy source.
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