Basket of alternatives essential:

Need for eco-friendly power stressed

by Shanika SRIYANANDA

Sri Lanka has proposed the establishment of a funding mechanism similar to the Montreal Protocol Financial Mechanism to evaluate the impacts of natural disasters caused by environmental change.

Addressing the third International Parliamentary Conference on Climate Change in the UK last week, Minister of Environment Anura Priyadarshana Yapa said the proposal would focus on integrated strategies to achieve sustainable development while addressing the climate change issue.

"The efforts of developing countries to reverse the trends of business as usual scenarios will depend on the ability of the global community to adhere to a global policy and global governing principles to distribute the world resources to determine the extent of exploitation of the eco-systems within its carrying capacity. In this context, it is necessary to ensure 'equality' and an 'equitable sharing of atmospheric space among all countries", he said.

Minister Yapa said although Sri Lanka's carbon dioxide (CO2) emission from power generation is very low, the country needs to look for low- emission or least-emission power generation in future, not only to cap the greenhouse gases, but also to gain benefits locally.

He said it was a challenge for the Government to have low-emission power generation as the country was running short of emissionless power generation sources such as hydro and biomass; we also have low potential for alternative energy sources such as solar, wind, wave energy and geo- thermal.

"While promoting biomass as a source of energy which will increase our bio-capacity, it is necessary to identify additional alternative strategies to meet the growing energy demands of the country.

"We have to find out a basket of alternatives. The best option would be solar, wind, wave energy and geo-thermal power. However, there are limitations for these energy sources to provide a similar output compatible with coal at present", he said.

Minister Yapa said the initial cost of solar energy was high while the output was relatively low due to low efficiency.

Meanwhile, depending on wind energy for a continuous supply was a problem due to seasonal variability.

He said to keep pace with the growing annual demand for electricity, the Government had no other option than generating coal based electricity, though this method emitted the highest amount of CO2 per unit of electricity.

"Coal power generation should be the last option if we give priority to be mitigation of emissions.

"But being a developing country, Sri Lanka has to expand its capacity for power generation to meet future consumer demand and development.

"At the moment we do this by giving priority to costing", he said.