Green Energy Champion 2019 to encourage use of renewables in SL

Wednesday, 30 January 2019 00:30 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

German Ambassador Jörn Rohde – Pic by Sameera Wijesinghe

By Divya Thotawatte

Green Energy Champion 2019 initiative, a country-wide competition identifying and recognising innovative ideas on improving energy efficiency, was recently launched with the aim of encouraging the use of renewables in Sri Lanka.

Held for the third successive year, Green Energy Champion Sri Lanka is a renewable energy education and encouragement platform, in which the main program is a competition that generates proposals on innovative projects involving renewable energy from among the public and private sectors and civil society organisations.

This initiative was launched by the German Federal Office collaborating with the Ministry of Power and Renewable Energy of Sri Lanka, and the project implementing partners Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH and Sri Lanka Sustainable Energy Authority.

German Ambassador Jörn Rohde speaking at the launch ceremony spoke on the increasing climate change impacts and threats while stressing on the fact that there is a lack of initiatives taken to combat climate change. He said that improving energy efficiency and using renewables would help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“The last 20 years were the warmest years in history and climate change is becoming increasingly threatening. Changing the way we generate power can also reduce greenhouse gas emissions. All countries have emphasised on the need of global collaboration and Sri Lanka and Germany share the same interests of mitigating climate change impacts. We need collaborations to find joint solutions,” he added.

GIZ Country Director Randa Kourieh-Ranarivelo said that Green Energy Champion 2019 would receive proposals on innovative concepts for green energy solutions from schools, public sector entities, and private sector companies including Small- and Medium-Enterprises (SMEs), and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) and Community-Based Organisations (CBOs).

Nine promising ideas will be shortlisted for a workshop session to further fine-tune the ideas and presentations with experts providing technical feedback. By the end of the workshop, submitted proposals will be assessed by a jury panel comprising of the German Embassy, Ministry of Power, Energy and Business Development, Sri Lanka Sustainable Energy Authority and GIZ.

Winners stand to receive awards from an allocation of Rs. 4 million to implement the project ideas starting June.