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Introduction
As the recent United Nations General Assembly sessions discussed the topic of Sustainable Development the mother nature continues fighting back with a vengeance to demonstrate that mankind can no longer deny the impact of climate change, it is important to carefully consider the role of Sri Lanka and its development options in the coming years. The COP 21 sessions of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) have ended in Paris and has clearly highlighted the need to eliminate the use of all fossil fuels in order to reach the target of “well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels”, to which all countries have agreed. As such this is a signal that Sri Lanka should also develop its future plans accordingly, even though the Paris agreement has not imposed any mandatory emission reductions. The reasons why Sri Lanka should shun the fossil fuels is much more fundamental than the issue of climate change.
There have been many laudatory and visionary statements made by politicians of the commitment of Sri Lanka to follow the logical path of sustainable development. But one also hears and reads statements by some individuals, who cast doubts on Sri Lanka’s ability to adopt such a policy and strategy. Unfortunately such statements are being made by persons, considering their level of training and intelligence, who should have taken the minimum of effort to verify the validity of their objections or open their eyes to the world trends. Such utterances are likely to be accepted by the general public who do not have the ready access to the truth and reality. The recognition these people have gained by frequent publications in the media are unfortunately not balanced by publications of the alternate viewpoints without preconceived biases.
Misinformation to Promote Coal Power Vs Renewable Energy Options
One area where such biased statements are made, with the unfortunate effect of misleading the general public, is the viability of Solar Energy and the immense contribution that it can make towards ensuring a sustainable and secure energy supply for the country. Sustainable supplies of energy are imperative for achieving the goal of sustainable development aspired to by all, and meeting the challenges of Climate Change as well. Thus deciding on the correct mix of energy sources and the well planned strategy towards achieving same is an urgent need. Forsaking the untrammeled dependence on unsustainable and uneconomical use of fossil fuels including coal, is an essential ingredient of such strategy for Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka, not having any coal of our own, has absolutely no advantage in pursuing the current strategy of increasing the use of coal, but stands to suffer from all the direct and indirect disadvantages. This fact is clearly being hidden from the general public by willful misinformation by state institutions as well as by some individuals.
While an adequate discussion on totality of such disadvantages cannot be done in a single article, one such element of disinformation can easily be debunked by proper analysis of salient data available in the public domain, both locally and internationally. This is the myth that is being propagated that expenditure of foreign exchange on solar PV systems is not in the interest of the country and is a waste of foreign exchange. This is in spite of the undeniable fact that, once installed the Solar PV systems would generate electricity over its life of a minimum of 20 years, without any significant further expenditure on equipment and none what so ever on fuel, either locally or in foreign exchange. In direct contrast, Sri Lanka has to continue to pay in foreign exchange for the import of coal, as well as for the import of spares for the maintenance of the equipment, not to mention the repayment of the loans taken with annual interest.
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