Relying on renewables

Sri Lanka has serious power generation issues; this is not a new problem by any means, but it has certainly come to a head in recent months. Power outages have become so frequent that an announcement there won’t be power cuts until Monday now qualifies as news.

In the midst of this, there’s been the expected shifting of blame and bandaid solutions, with the Government giving assurances, ones arguably based more on hope than any semblance of effective planning.

What all this means is that, regardless of the discourse, the situation is so dire and so far beyond the point of no return that riding it out seems to be our only recourse at this point in time. That said, this shouldn’t be used as a reason to not look for more long-term solutions to mitigate against a similar power crisis in the future.

To the Government’s credit, it does have a stated goal of reaching 70% renewable energy generation by 2030. However, getting to this point isn’t exactly straightforward.

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 the exchange rate and other variations into consideration, as happens in Sri Lanka. For these changes to become reality though mindsets will have to change and policymakers will have to genuinely be committed to putting renewables at the heart of Sri Lanka’s energy strategy.