At the kick-off workshop on “Moving forward fuel efficiency policy in Thailand”

Recently, the Transport and Climate Change (TCC) project, in collaboration with the Office of Transport and Traffic Policy and Planning (OTP), organised a kick-off workshop with the title, Moving forward fuel efficiency policy in Thailand. Taking place at OTP, the aim of the workshop was to support the improvement of fuel efficiency policies in Thailand’s land transport sector while intending to support the sustainable transport goals (ST-1.3) of the ASEAN Kuala Lumpur Transport Strategic Plan (KLTSP; 2016-2025). It was especially important to create a common understanding of fuel efficiency policies among stakeholders, to share international experiences of implementing fuel efficiency policies, and to set up a sector network for fuel efficiency policy in Thailand.

Mr.Wijit Nimitrwanich, Advisory-Level Transport Technical Officer at OTP, and Mr. Tali Trigg, TCC Project Team leader, welcomed the participants and explained their motivation for organising the workshop. The workshop was structured into a briefing and a discussion part. In the first part, TCC brought in GIZ consultant Alex Koerner to give a presentation on the successes of implementing fuel efficiency policies from around the world in order to answer the question, How Can Thailand Benefit from Fuel Efficiency Policies? Participants were then briefed on the current situation of fuel efficiency policy in Thailand and in ASEAN by listening to two presentations given by Mr. Asawin Asawutmangkul from DEDE, and Ms. Chutinthorn Mankhong from OTP, respectively.

Moving into the second part of the workshop, participants jointly brainstormed a stakeholder landscape of the field of fuel efficiency policy, differentiating between information/awareness, regulatory, and fiscal roles and responsibilities. Participants then formed working groups and concluded that (1) the multitude of stakeholders coupled with (2) the lack of a clear leadership function as well as (3) the insufficient awareness of the benefits of fuel efficiency policies, together form the main obstacles to the promotion of these policies.

TCC will build on this momentum by preparing a study on fuel efficiency and by organising a follow-up workshop in the near future. A similarly structured workshop was carried out in Hanoi on March 29, 2016, in order to engage local stakeholders to continue efforts to increase fuel efficiency in Vietnam as well.
Since the topic of fuel efficiency is interdisciplinary, a wide array of experts and stakeholders was invited to contribute to the workshop. Participants included representatives of the:

• Automotive Engineering Bureau of the Department of Land Transport (DLT),
• International Cooperation Bureau of the Ministry of Transport (MoT),
• Department of Alternative Energy Development and Efficiency (DEDE),
• Energy Policy and Planning Office (EPPO),
• Office of Natural Resources and Environmental Policy and Planning (ONEP),
• Pollution Control Department (PCD),
• Excise Department (ED),
• Office of Industrial Economics (OIE),
• Thai Industrial Standards Institute (TISI), and
• Thailand Automotive Institute (TAI).