Why we pay more than what we need for our energy

1. By 2020, Malaysia is expected to become net importer of oil base on a forecast Asia Pacific Energy Research Centre (APERC) in 2006.At present the government is subsidizing up to 70% of fuel used for generation and that is one of the reason why Malaysian is paying the existing rate of electrical energy to power their life.

2. How do you feel? Worry or we feel nothing at all. The PM has mentioned just few days ago that subsidies especially in the power sector will have to end one day and either we like it or not, once the subsidy is gradually taken away, we will have to pay much much more than what we are paying today. It would be fine if our income would increase accordingly but who can guarantee that?

3. We can blame it to everyone including the government later but how much control we might have over each of them.Why harping on something that we have no or little control when we have so much options in the way we use our energy? That is something we have more control over it. We do not to pay what we do not need to if we are efficient enough in using energy on our daily life.

4. Wasting energy is as easy as not wasting it. It is all up to our attitude. Most of the time we do not care. Simply because we can afford to pay but we never think why we can afford to pay it now. Sometime we seem happy enough wasting energy everywhere and in the same time using more money on top of that.

5. A simple example is, we do not mind to buy a thick blanket to sleep at night because we feel to cold but in the same time we set the temperature of air conditioner lower than 20 Degree Celcius at home. If we set it higher we do not need the blanket anyway and happy enough to additional RM50-RM60 per month just to use the thick blanket. And then in the same time we make a lot of noise every time the tariff increase occurred and later we need to pay extra RM20 every month. It is funny right since we have been paying more than that for something we do not really need for years before the tariff increase imposed.

6. When we go to work, we normally so comfortable investing more for coats or jackets to keep us warm at work but we have less control on the temperature. I have been in many building for various occasions and one thing that really obvious is, the temperature is too cold. It is strange since most of us were brought up in a warm and humid environment but we cannot stand for a while when we work at the office. Why? If we do not care when we pay it using our money at home, how can we expect we will care when the company paying the energy bill at the office?


7. It is actually up to us because the big change that may happen depending on small change in attitude today. Crying or complaining for our own ignorance can only make us more struggling with the energy costs that we need to pay to live in the future. This is especially when our country start to import energy where the government will have less control or no over the fluctuating price of fuel sources in the world.