Powering development

The Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) has said that Sri Lanka’s largest wind farm in Mannar has been completed. The long-delayed project will add 100 MW to the national grid and underscores the importance of promoting renewable energy.   

President Rajapaksa’s manifesto talks of increasing renewable energy to 80% but with at least one more coal power plant being discussed clear policy decisions are awaited. More coal is largely an unwise move given that Sri Lanka is among the top three most vulnerable countries to climate change and cannot increase its emissions. Multiple studies over the past few years have also shown the environmental and social costs levied by the existing coal power plant. 

Therefore Sri Lanka has to seriously join the march for renewables being followed by many other developing countries that are adapting renewables as their base power generation options and not just supplementary sources as was done by developed countries earlier.   

Collectively, developing countries have more than half of global renewable power capacity. China and India are rapidly expanding markets for renewable energy. Brazil produces most of the world’s sugar-derived ethanol and has been adding new biomass and wind power plants. Many renewable markets are growing at rapid rates in countries such as Argentina, Costa Rica, Egypt, Indonesia, Kenya, Tanzania, Thailand, Tunisia, and Uruguay.

More developing countries are implementing the public policies needed for the widespread development of renewable energy technologies and markets, which have traditionally been dominated by Europe, Japan, and North America. Even Australia, which recently hit global headlines for bushfires, actively invests in renewables and has made huge inroads to increasing their solar power generation capacity. Lessons Sri Lanka, which has a similar sized population, would do well to learn from.  Compared with fossil fuel technologies, which are typically mechanised and capital intensive, the renewable energy industry is more labour intensive. Solar panels need humans to install them; wind farms need technicians for maintenance. 

This means that, on average, more jobs are created for each unit of electricity generated from renewable sources than from fossil fuels. Renewable energy is providing affordable electricity across the country right now, and can help stabilise energy prices in the future.

In Sri Lanka scaling up rooftop power generation, establishing floating solar facilities and connecting them with the national grid could ensure that renewables are adopted faster than coal power plants that typically take about three years to come into operation. Wind and other sources can also be prioritised.  

Moreover, the costs of renewable energy technologies have declined steadily, and are projected to drop even more. For example, the average price to install solar dropped more than 70% between 2010 and 2017. The cost of generating electricity from wind dropped 66% between 2009 and 2016. Costs will likely decline even further as markets mature and companies increasingly take advantage of economies of scale. 

In contrast, fossil fuel prices can vary dramatically and are prone to substantial price swings, especially if policies are made without taking exchange rate and other variations into consideration, as happens in Sri Lanka. For these changes to become reality though mind-sets will have to change and policymakers will have to genuinely be committed to putting renewables at the heart of Sri Lanka’s energy strategy.