Oil mafia rearing head in Ceylon Electricity Board’s long-term power generation plan: expert

By Chandeepa Wettasinghe
The ‘oil mafia’ is rearing its head in the Ceylon Electricity Board’s ‘2018-2037 Least Cost Long Term Generation Expansion Plan’ (LCLTGEP) to destabilize reliable power generation, according to experts who spoke at the Public Utility Commission of Sri Lanka’s (PUCSL) public consultation event on the LCLTGEP, held yesterday at the BMICH.
 “The oil mafia is behind the push for coal. The data looks like a backward calculation to make coal and LNG look attractive. This does not include external costs, policy costs etc. It’s a fraud. They’re playing with numbers,” Strategic Enterprise Management Agency (SEMA) Chairman/CEO Ashoka Abeygunawardana said.
He noted that this makes renewable energy hard to compete in paper.
According to Energy Sector Consultant Dr. Janaka Ratnasiri, the LCLTGEP assumes prices of coal and other fuel to remain constant over the 20 years of the plan.
“Coal and LNG plant construction up to 2037 is based on past prices. This is highly flawed,” he said.
He also opined that the LCLTGEP does not take externalities into account in the ‘economic cost’ of power generation, which should make the LCLTGEP illegal under the Electricity Act of 2009.
Energy Sector Consultant Dr. Thilak Siyambalapitiya said that the country’s energy policies, which should give the highest priority to the long-term, then to the short term, then to efficient generation, and finally to emergency procedures, is now working in reverse, with the emergency footing favouring oil.
 “We see and hear day in and day out that we’re being asked to conserve (electricity), that capacity is not enough. It looks like the drama of 1995-2005 is being re-enacted again, which finally results in not renewables, but oil, oil, and more oil,” he said.
One of the first actions the government took when power generation weakened during the droughts which occurred in late 2016 and early 2017 was to turn towards oil-based power generation and even to re-connect decommissioned privately held diesel-fired power plants to the grid.

Dr. Siyambalapitiya noted that from January to April 2017, about 42 percent of power generation in the country was through oil, which exceeded the budget for the period presented in older LCLTGEPs by US$ 160 million. “When will the commission (PUCSL) stand up to government pressure to construct more diesel power plants and order CEB not to build more diesel power plants? And when will Sri Lanka reach the 10 percent limit on oil which is in the national policy?” he questioned.  He said that as long as the country relies on oil for its power generation and goes through the repeated cycles of emergencies which favour oil, the system will not be reliable.
Although past and the 2018 LCLTGEP include a fair share of renewable power development, Dr. Siyambalapitiya said that these long-term plans end up getting cancelled.
Industry players have noted that an unusually large number of bureaucratic hurdles exist for the implementation of renewable projects.
“There’s a need to make processes faster, or it discourages developers,” Rainforest Protectors of Sri Lanka Spokesperson Jayantha Wijesinghe said. He noted that Sri Lanka has much higher solar power potential—which makes up 75 of global energy potential, ahead of wind and waves—than solar power generation leaders such as Germany, but that many investors have been turned away. 
Although past and the 2018 LCLTGEP include a fair share of renewable power development, Dr. Siyambalapitiya said that these long-term plans end up getting cancelled. 
Abeygunawardana noted that according to the final cabinet decision on the power sector generation mix, 70 percent of it should consist of renewable energy by 2030, which eliminates space for more fossil fuel based generation, which in turn places current practice against national policies.