Keeping it green and chilly: Refrigerator techs must be certified, Seychelles says

Under the new standards, it is mandatory for bulbs, freezers and refrigerators, air conditioners, electric water heaters and washing machines to meet the required minimum standard. (Salifa Karapetyan)

(Seychelles News Agency) - All local refrigeration technicians in Seychelles must be certified as having been trained as part of the third phase of the Green Cooling Africa Initiative, said a top official in the Ministry of Environment, Energy and Climate Change on Monday.

“We want to ensure that those involved in refrigeration are legit and receive proper training. Now people are operating without proper certification,” said Inese Chang-Waye, the ozone coordinator at the end of a half-day workshop.

Chang-Waye said the Ministry is “targeting the Seychelles Institute of Technology where young are trained specifically for that job. We want to ensure that they receive proper certification in order to have a skilled labour force.”  

She added that the local authorities are also working on a new regulation under which certified technicians will need to bring an identification card with them for jobs they do.

The workshop was aimed at establishing a suitable infrastructure for implementing the scheme within the local context for both the formal and informal sector. It was organised by the German development agency GIZ in collaboration with the Seychelles Ozone Unit in the Ministry of Environment, Energy and Climate Change.

Since 1993 Seychelles, an archipelago in the western Indian Ocean, has been working with the GIZ under the Montreal Protocol through the eventual Phase-out of Chlorofluoro Carbons (CFCs) and now with phase-out of Hydro-chlorofluoro Carbons (HCFC).

 The island nation joined the second phase of the Green Cooling Africa Initiative programme in December last year. The programme is supporting its partner countries to create a shift in the cooling sector towards more sustainable technology and a low mitigation pathway.

Seychelles became the fifth country in Africa to be part of the Green Cooling Africa Initiative after Ghana, Namibia, Kenya and neighbouring island nation Mauritius.

The technical advisor of GIZ, Dennis Huhren, told SNA that this is an ongoing project aims at a reduction of global greenhouse gas emissions from the cooling sector. Huhren said that Seychelles is making a lot of effort to a greener society and he is here to share best international practices.

In an effort to reduce energy use in Seychelles, the Energy Commission has also set energy efficiency standards for five types of electrical home appliances entering the country this year.

Under the new standards, it is mandatory for bulbs, freezers and refrigerators, air conditioners, electric water heaters and washing machines to meet the required minimum standard.

The Green Cooling Initiative estimates the refrigeration and air conditioning (RAC) sector to account for 13 percent of the global greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, making the RAC sector a rapidly increasing contributor to climate change.