President's 'solar drive' to combat oil prices

The President has encouraged the Central Bank to grant soft loans for solar power projects.

This drive would spare more of the precious oil and gas

It could result in a technology that is new and relatively labor-intensive for Sri Lanka to comply with international environmental standards like the Kyoto protocol.

Rising oil prices and delays in developing alternative fuels like hydrogen and methanol will lead to prohibitively expensive flights and declines in tourist numbers. Income will come down.

In this context, renewable energy can hardly be regarded as an uneconomical hobby of esoteric tree-huggers anymore. Governments and corporations around the world are acknowledging its importance in increasing numbers, Wind power plants are already competitive with newly built coal plants.

The University of Stanford recently identified suitable regions for wind power generation in a special world atlas. It has argued that the energy needs of the whole planet could theoretically be met several times over by using all the sites identified in the atlas.

Concetrated solar power (CSP) plants, which harvest solar energy with huge mirrors, can heat a liquid and thus fire an otherwise conventional power plant providing electricity to whole towns. They also could power the very energy-intensive desalination plants and produce hydrogen for cars and fuel cells. In California, CSP plants already provide electricity for over 350,000 peoples.

Photovoltaic devices on buildings produce electricity directly from the sunlight. Combined with storage facilities (like new generation batteries and pressurized air) for times when there is no sunlight, they could decentralize energy supplies and reduce dependency on grids. This would need to be spurred by government incentives along the line of Germany's 100,000 Roofs Program.