Eco-driving promoted to cut emissions

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The government is working to change the behavior of public transportation drivers, a key element in the campaign to reduce carbon emissions.

The transportation sector accounts for 50 percent of the nation's total fuel consumption. Of that, 80 percent is consumed by land transportation.

"In addition to fuel diversification, energy-use efficiency is a second means of reducing national fuel subsidies, which have proven to be very costly for Indonesia," Dollaris Riauaty "Waty" Suhadi, the project manager for Swisscontact's Clean Air Project, said during a campaign drive Thursday.

To increase efficiency in fuel use, Waty added, Swisscontact has introduced eco-driving or fuel-efficiency driving among bus and commercial vehicle operators through a pilot study involving drivers of charter bus firm PT Hiba Utama.

"After training 100 Hiba Utama drivers in eco-driving techniques, our study concluded that the company managed to reduce fuel consumption up to 18 percent, enabling it to save at least US$12,000 per month," she said. Hiba Utama operates more than 2,000 vehicles and employs at least 4,000 drivers.

Swisscontact previously trained 50 truck drivers at publicly-listed cement maker PT Holcim Indonesia in 2006, the year the non-government organization first introduced eco-driving to Indonesia. The concept has also been applied in Switzerland, Britain, the Netherlands, and Germany.

In eco-driving, motorists avoid hard acceleration, excessive braking and other behaviors that lead to higher fuel consumption.

"The way we accelerate and shift gears affects the way fuel is used," said the Transportation Ministry's director general for land transportation, Iskandar Abubakar.

According to Iskandar, since the commercial transportation sector is not only the country's largest fuel consumer, but also one of the sectors most likely to be hit by fuel subsidy cuts, there is a greater need for eco-friendly operation measures within the industry.

Soetanto Soehondo of the City Transportation Board, however, argued that the idea should have been introduced among small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and individually-owned commercial operators first, instead of big players like Hiba Utama and PT Bluebird.

"A cursory glance at the city's transportation system will tell you that the main contributors to carbon monoxide emissions are actually buses owned by SMEs and private individuals," Soetanto told The Jakarta Post by phone Thursday evening.

"Well-established companies like Hiba, on the other hand, already have certain operating standards. So naturally they will face fewer challenges in training their drivers, unlike public bus operators, which are pressed to generate as much money as possible within a short period of time," he argued.

According to Waty, Swisscontact is targeting large fleet companies for reasons of efficiency.

"Introducing eco-driving measures to companies with large vehicle fleets will yield more results than approaching SMEs that on average run small numbers of vehicles," she said. (amr)