With so many sun days, great potential for Lanka - EDITORIAL

ith the government having virtually brought under control the ethnic tension and violence in some areas of the Kandy District, President Maithripala Sirisena on Saturday left for India to attend the inaugural ceremony of the International Solar Alliance (ISA) Summit in New Delhi. He was invited by India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and France’s President Emmanuel Macron to participate in this First Conference of the ISA. Around 500 Heads of State or governments and other representatives of several countries are attending this Conference with Mr. Macron now playing the world leadership role in global warming issues after the United States President Donald Trump pulled his country out of the historic Paris climate accord reached in 2015.  
India -- with its population of about 1.3 billion, the second largest in the world next to China -- is solidly backing the French leader in the effort to strengthen the Paris accord and to prevent a global catastrophe, though the unpredictable and shaky Mr. Trump still says he believes climate change is a hoax made in China. Whatever Mr. Trump may think, the Chinese Communist Party at its plenary sessions yesterday amended the constitution to make President Xi, the President for life at a time when China is emerging as one of the world’s most powerful countries in the economic, political and other fields including the battle against global warming.   

The ISA, a treaty based international inter-governmental alliance of 121 solar resource-rich countries lying fully or partially between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, was founded at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris on November 30, 2015. Sri Lanka became a founding member of this alliance on February 12, 2018.  
According to reports, the conference aims to create a common platform to meet the growing demand for solar power technology, to accelerate and broaden the technology for solar power, to minimize costs of solar projects and to take decisions related to the development of the field.   
According to the Guardian newspaper, India’s solar power prices are reaching a new low. Plummeting wholesale prices have put India on track to meet renewable energy targets set out in the Paris agreement. With Sri Lanka negotiating a trade agreement with India much focus needs to be on this vital area so that Sri Lanka also could use more solar energy for industrial and domestic purposes.   
The Guardian says wholesale solar power prices have reached another record low in India, faster than analysts predicted and are further undercutting the price of fossil fuel-generated power in the country.  

The tumbling price of solar energy also increases the likelihood that India will meet – and by its own predictions, exceed – the renewable energy targets it set at the Paris climate accords in December 2015.  
India is the world’s third-largest carbon polluter, with emissions forecast to at least double as it seeks to develop its economy and lift hundreds of millions of citizens out of poverty.  
Ensuring it generates as much of that energy as possible from renewable sources is considered crucial to limiting catastrophic global temperature increases, the Guardian reports.   
In Rajasthan last year, power companies Phelan Energy and Avaada Power each offered to charge INR 2.62 for a kilowatt-hour (Kw/h) of electricity generated from solar panels they hope to build at an energy park in the desert state. Last year’s previous record lowest bid was INR 4.34 for a Kw/h .  

With the world becoming more innovative, imaginative and enterprising in areas where renewable energy is created, the Cable News Network (CNN) reported recently about the world’s first energy-positive hotel planned for the Arctic Circle. It says, “When approaching the Helgeland coastline, in northern Norway, you can’t miss the Svartisen glacier spilling down the side of Almlifjellet Mountain. Below, the gin-clear Holandsfjorden fjord -- an extension of the Norwegian Sea -- reflects the blue-toned mountain like a mirror. It’s in this unspoiled environment that you’ll find Svart, which aims to be the world’s first energy-positive hotel when it opens in 2021”.  
We hope President Sirisena and the government will also give encouragement and tax incentives for such eco-friendly projects so that Sri Lanka will be not only a just country, but also a green country. With about 12 hours of sunlight or solar energy everyday, such a mission should not be too difficult. What is required is a vision and a commitment.