The 45-day Ministry Challenge is a component of CEE Comp’s first edition, ran from July 4 to August 12, 2022. The challenge’s major goals were to increase awareness of energy efficiency and got ministry buildings engaged in energy-efficient practices.

The Ministry of Mines and Energy (MME), the Ministry of the Environment (MOE), and the National of Industry, Science, Technology & Innovation (NISTI), part of the Ministry of Industry, Science, Technology & Innovation (MISTI), participated in this challenge.

The green teams, composed of representatives of the ministries in charge of implementing the program internally. They attended to an onboarding meeting held by CEE Comp team in the first week to discuss the overall perspective of the challenge. Following this, trainings and workshops were held at the ministries, bringing together employees from various departments. The Institute of Technology of Cambodia (ITC) team led the training to expand participants’ knowledge of energy efficiency. The training focused particularly on how to achieve energy efficiency while maintaining their level of comfort. Sevea team led the workshops with the purpose of identifying one or two realistic energy-saving measures. The measures had be easy for other staff members to implement.

The ministries began carrying out those measures in their building throughout the last weeks of the challenge. Finally, the ministry staff took part in a final quiz at the end of the competition. The questions in the quiz focused on participants’ energy knowledge following their participation in the challenge, and the results from the three ministries were excellent.

We appreciate the efforts of the green teams from each ministry, who actively assisted CEE Comp in organizing the training and workshop for their colleagues; and who carried out a social media campaign on energy efficiency. It was amazing to see how the green team highly promoted the challenge in both media and in-person interactions. After this competition, we hope that the three ministries will once again take the lead in promoting energy efficiency in the public sector and to the general public.

About CEE Comp: The Cambodia Energy Efficiency Competition is implemented by the ITC and Sevea. It is a local adaptation of the CUBE competition initiated by the French Institute for Building Performance (IFPEB) as a bid to reduce carbon emissions in France. The CEE Comp is implemented in partnership with the EuroCham, EnergyLab, the Liger Leadership Academy and the IFPEB, as well as with the financial support of Schneider Electric and the National Council for Sustainable Development under the Cambodia Climate Change Alliance Innovation Grant Facility, supported by the European Union, the United Nation Development Program and Sweden.