A one-month energy saving campaign for consumers will begin on Sunday.

The announcement was made by Ahmad Al-Taweer of the Saudi Energy Efficiency Center (SEEC) at the King Abdul Aziz City for Science and Technology (KACST).

The aim of the campaign is to alert consumers to the importance of saving energy and its economic and environmental implications.

As part of the campaign, the Ministry of Commerce mandates that all car vendors post the energy saving label designed by SEEC in cooperation with the Saudi Standards, Metrology and Quality Organization, on all 2015 model cars. If the cars lack the labels, the vendors will be fined by the ministry, according to Naif Al-Humaidi, a member of the SEEC Transportation Committee.

The label has detailed information on manufacturing, the type of fuel used and fuel consumption for vehicles weighing less than 3,500 kg.

“We want to focus consumers’ attention to their options when they decide to buy a car. They should be aware of energy consumption so that they can make an informed decision. We want to encourage this as a way of reducing the Kingdom’s very high consumption of transportation fuel,” he said.

“The transportation sector uses almost 23 percent of the local fuel consumption and the cars on the roads increase by 7 percent annually. Based on this, it is expected that the 12 million cars currently on the Kingdom’s streets and roads will rise to 21 million by 2030. This means fuel consumption will be 1.7 million barrel a day which is too high.

As a first step, we want to make the public aware of the excessive use and waste of fuel,” he said.

The Kingdom must also address the need to reduce energy consumption without affecting the interests of citizens in low fuel prices or the export of oil.

Prince Abdul Aziz bin Salman, deputy minister for petroleum and mineral resources, is working on the problem through the Committee for the National Comprehensive Program for Rationalization.