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Sri Lanka Mirror turns 12 today!

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‘Sri Lanka Mirror’ celebrates its 12th Anniversary today (Nov. 01).

The ‘Sri Lanka Mirror’ website, which was launched as an bilingual e-news portal on November 1, 2010, has become one of the trend setting pioneers of the online media industry in Sri Lanka.

Thriving in an extremely competitive industry as a purely online news publication while retaining our integrity has been no easy feat.

However, we take pride in the fact that ‘Sri Lanka Mirror’ has grown more as an opinion maker rather than a mere news provider throughout the year.

Ahead of our 12th anniversary, we opted for a fresh look in our desktop and mobile versions and going global with foreign collaborations from October 16 and we are excited to reach new dimensions together with our beloved readers within the next year.

As our tagline suggests, we aspire to remain on the side of the public always as an unbiased and independent news outlet, ensuring the public’s ‘Right To Know’, while contributing to their ‘Power To Change.’

Here’s to re- building Sri Lanka with new knowledge!

  • Mirror Editorial Team

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2024 Boao Forum: Accelerating net-zero transition in Asia

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The Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference is held in Qionghai, China's Hainan Province, March 26, 2024. /CFP

The Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) Annual Conference is being held in Boao, China’s southern province of Hainan from March 26 to 29. Its focus will be “Asia and the World: Common Challenges, Shared Responsibilities.” BFA Secretary General Li Baodong said this year’s BFA Annual Forum will focus on how the international community can work together to address challenges in the areas of four major topics: the global economy, social development, international cooperation and scientific and technological innovation.

National leaders, governmental officials, heads of international organizations, businesspeople, experts in various fields and the press will be invited from at least the 29 member countries of the BFA, which consists of most Asian countries.  

The first BFA meeting was held in Boao in February 2001. Now, it is a unique opportunity for Asian countries to review and discuss common problems and develop common action plans and policies.

On March 18, a launching ceremony was held in Boao for the “Boao Nearly Zero Carbon Demonstration Zone” by the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development and the Hainan provincial government. 

The project aims to showcase China’s green and low-carbon technologies and practices to the world in a demonstration zone focusing on “almost zero” emissions technologies, such as photovoltaics, wind energy collectors, energy storage systems, and an organic waste treatment project.

Located within this demonstration zone are the renovated BFA International Conference Center, a press center and a hotel all of which showcase low-carbon energy technologies. These renovations and demonstrations at the BFA conference facilities should establish the context for many of the sessions in this year’s BFA Forum. They should also set a shining example of the potential innovative technologies for a low-carbon world.

This year’s preliminary conference agenda for the four days of meetings includes numerous general discussions concerning the common issues and current trends facing the BFA member countries. In terms of the net-zero transformation of Asia’s energy systems towards zero-carbon power, there are also a number of sessions.  

According to the International Energy Agency’s forecast, Asia will consume half of the world’s electricity by 2025, and as early as 2021, Asia’s carbon emissions accounted for half of the global emissions. Thus, Asia plays a key role in the transition to a low-carbon world. These BFA sessions will examine these potential transformations in Asia to grow the economy while at the same time reducing carbon emissions.

The transformation of low-carbon technologies will be highlighted in a number of  technology innovation sessions, including “Accelerating Transition towards Zero-Carbon Power” on March 26, “Sustainability Disclosure, the New Normal” on March 27, “Green Development: Inspiring a Shared Future for Urban and Rural Communities” on March 28, and so on.

Clearly, the innovative energy transformation will be a significant part of the BFA final press conference, any resulting recommendations and actions, and any resulting reports. Accelerating the net-zero transformation of Asia’s power system is of great significance to the global response to climate change and the realization of green development worldwide.

BFA will help lead national governments, intergovernmental organizations as well as the private sector in Asia as they work together to promote the energy revolution and strengthen cooperation in all aspects of this very important transformation.  

  • – Robert B. Weisenmiller
  • (news.cgtn.com)
  • Robert B. Weisenmiller, a special commentator on current affairs for CGTN, is a research affiliate at the California-China Climate Institute, University of California, Berkeley, and a former chair of the California Energy Commission. The article reflects the author’s opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN

(This story, originally published by CGTN has not been edited by SLM staff)

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Backlash builds against Sri Lanka’s $3 Billion clean energy push 

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Utility scale wind, solar and battery projects draw CEB’s ire as they march to take away their vested interests.

The government has ignited a green energy investment spree that’s expected to reach as high as $ 3 billion over the next 3 years. The road to bringing this money in the economy, though, is increasingly hitting speed bumps from the likes of the so called ‘mafia’ CEB officials. 

Country’s ambitious vision aims to make the nation’s electric grid greener with 70% of the electricity demand to be met through renewable energy by 2030. 

Companies have already announced plans for committing $25 billion investment up to 2030 in the renewable energy sector in the Country, according to the Board of Investment. 

With potential Private investments over the next 3-4 years through FDI could include $3 billion in utility scale wind, solar and battery storage projects – Sun Power leading with $1.5 billion, followed by Adani Green with $900 million, by Orbital energy with $200 million, by WindForce PLC with $150 million and balance by a consortium of private developers. However, the opposition to projects has mounted for myriad reasons. 

Increasingly, the few so called ‘mafia’ CEB officials, who have strangled the Country’s power sector by delaying the approval process, seems to be more concerned that the rapidly expanding utility scale size of wind, solar and battery projects will irreparably alter their powers and thus their vested interests in earning a share out of the pie. 

Despite this backlash, many projects will eventually get built, say developers and analysts, but they could take longer and cost more than expected. 

At the government level, there is ample support for speeding up the implementation of the projects, but its only CEB who is pushing back on their own self-motivated agenda, not know at large.

– Harendra Kuruppu

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Personal agenda of CEB officials delaying renewable energy projects

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The central government & their policies are responsible for most of the hardships we face today. But when it comes to implementing investments and projects in the renewable energy sector, surprisingly the central government has good policies and intent but have failed to implement them due to bureaucracy, corruption and personal agenda of few CEB officials.

The present problem is having too much capacity in the wrong types of power plants and too little in the right types. It’s an open secret that few of the CEB officials are not fond of utility scale renewable energy. They like non-renewable sources of energy but hate utility scale wind, solar and battery storage projects.

Despite renewable energy being clean and cheap, the utility scale RE projects have not been implemented in Sri Lanka on a large scale. Sri Lanka still has plenty of room for Solar and Wind. We only have around 12% of RE in the grid (excluding hydro). We are far from the critical limit that could possibly considerably impact the grid from the fluctuating nature of renewable sources.

CEB wants to convince people that the unreliable nature of RE is the reason why they oppose it. But the real reason is, they can’t maintain their infamous mafia power and pursue their personal agenda when there is an abundance of RE power in the system. The proposal of RE investors won’t get accepted even though the offered rate was lower.

While purchasing non-renewable energy power at a rate of over Rs.45 per unit, the CEB is blocking over 1,500 MW of new utility scale solar, wind and battery storage projects. Had these projects been approved by CEB and put to built in this year, they would be ready to supply electricity at the Rs.24 to 30 per kWh tariff within one and a half years’ time period, with lower than prevailing solar and wind energy tariffs and also far less than the cost of non-renewable electricity.

Few CEB Engineers suddenly come to realize that if the trend of implementing such utility scale re-projects continues in the country, this is going to be a threat to their business and their vested interests. 

So, they have resorted to delaying tactics in the approval process of utility scale RE projects not favorable to them, effectively blocking large scale investments and investors who have plans to invest in the country.

On analysis, with the delay in these 1500 MW RE projects, the country will lose annually ~3200 GWh of clean and cheap energy resulting in the country’s economy spending additional Rs. 20 billion per year on account of the higher cost of non- renewable electricity.

It’s hard to fathom the unbelievable level of bureaucracy, corruption & personal agenda of CEB.

– Harendra Kuruppu

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