The Ceylon Chamber of Commerce, National Agenda Committee on Transport and Logistics presented a detailed report to the Government outlining strategies that could be adopted to significantly reduce congestion and pollution within Colombo.
One of the identified strategies was encouraging the import of electric vehicles and discouraging the import of Internal Combustion Engine vehicles.
Sheran Fernando, an expert on sustainability in mobility and energy, contributing to formulate mobility policy in Sri Lanka, said the current ban on vehicle imports presents the perfect time for the Government to introduce the policy framework that will be in effect when vehicle imports are permitted. This gives the industry and everyone in the mobility ecosystem time to be prepared for this shift.
Following are excerpts of the interview:
Q:What is emobility and how does it promote sustainability?
A. Let us take “e-mobility” as being synonymous to Electromobility. Electromobility can be defined as a system of transport that does not emit carbon. It has a system of transport that is driven by electricity, and has onboard means of storing electricity.
Sustainability can be broadly defined as the ability to sustain or maintain over time.
To answer how e-mobility promotes sustainability, one could start by envisioning the impact of sustainability if there is no e-mobility.
Currently, vehicles contribute to over 60 percent of global oil consumption, and over 20 percent of total global carbon emission. In Sri Lanka, transport accounts for around 20 percent of total carbon produced. With the increase in the global population, if we continue to use fossil fuel-based transport systems, we will deplete our available fuel reserves, and drive carbon emissions up to unsustainable levels.
Hence, from the standpoint of sustainability, transport must convert to one with zero emissions, which is e-mobility.
The conversion to e-mobility alone will not make transport sustainable. The reason for this is that although the act of moving from one place to another does not emit carbon, the source of the energy is often produced using fossil fuels, and that process expends carbon. Over 40 percent of total carbon generated globally is from the production of electricity and heat.
The sun can produce the global energy requirement for one year, within a span of two hours! Hence, e-mobility can be completely sustainable if the source of the energy is from the sun, and this energy is stored and used for transport.
Q:Specifically to Sri Lanka, what are the needs identified to promote it here?
A. To answer in a broader context, transport accounts for 20 percent of total greenhouse gases (GHGs), and the import of fuel for transport totals around US$ 4 billion per year. The import of oil is our single largest import, amounting to approximately US$ 7 billion a year.
From the 20 percent of total GHG emission from transport, rough estimates are that 80 percent of this is created within the city of Colombo. Hence, if we can have green transport within the city of Colombo, we have made a significant dent in the country’s total GHG emissions.
Electrifying mobility and ensuring that the charging of motor vehicles is done through solar power is one step. The Ceylon Chamber of Commerce, National Agenda Committee on Transport and Logistics presented a detailed report to the Government outlining strategies that could be adopted to significantly reduce congestion and pollution within Colombo.
Some of the identified strategies were; encouraging the import of electric vehicles and discouraging the import of Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) vehicles; enforcing EU6 emission standards (to lower emission from ICE vehicles); digitised traffic management and incident management to ensure a smoother flow of traffic; upgrading public transport including a network of E-busses to operate within the city; demand management strategies such as city entry chargers, and emission levies and so on and discouraging privately owned vehicles and encouraging shared mobility solutions (so the number of vehicles required can be reduced, thus reducing congestion and making transport more efficient)
Many of these strategies are mentioned in Sri Lanka’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) submitted at the COP 26 meeting in Glasgow in 2021.
These strategies, if adopted simultaneously, we can significantly reduce the total GHG emission in Sri Lanka.
Q:What is the situation in Sri Lanka with regard to emobility?
A:The problem with e-mobility in Sri Lanka is that policies have been of a stop-start nature. Around 2015, a significant duty incentive was granted for the import of EVs and over 7,000 vehicles were imported within a very short period.
However, this policy was reversed and the continued import of EVs was not sustainable. This led to the retardation of the development of the charging infrastructure. There was an import control issue in place that prevented the import of replacement lithium-ion batteries for the vehicles imported into Sri Lanka. The owners of these vehicles faced many constraints. This led to an overall loss of faith in EVs in Sri Lanka.
Presently, there is no formalised e-mobility program announced. However, the President has stated that when the vehicle import ban is rescinded, only EVs will be imported. The NDCs for COP26 are also very supportive of e-mobility. Hence, one is cautiously optimistic about rapid adoption of e-mobility in Sri Lanka.
Q:Sri Lanka’s current power generation is 60 percent from fossil fuel. Given Sri Lanka’s current energy crisis, there are priority areas where electricity supply needs to be provided and with the forex crisis, it has been challenging to obtain fossil fuel. In such a situation, how can emobility be a viable solution to Sri Lanka?
A. Again, I respond to your question, which is very important, in a broader context. I said that the sun produces the world’s energy for an entire year, within a mere two hours. Sri Lanka is blessed with abundant solar energy. We have long days and lots of sunlight.
With the world focused on controlling the growth of GHG emissions, they are opting to reduce the dependence on fossil fuel for the generation of electricity. Many nations are adopting the three D’s; digitisation, decentralisation and decarbonisation of their electricity generation as a strategy.
This strategy allows the grid to bring in more and more renewable energy onto it. The trend of reducing prices of Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) enables solar power to be stored.
Exploration of these strategies will not only reduce our GHG emissions, but also reduce our import dependence on oil, totaling US$ 7 billion per year.
A situation where every house is energy neutral by harvesting solar power, and storing it through BESS and using the grid merely for backup power, or for peak power augmentation is now a possibility.
Every house can be generating electricity through roof solar panels and be earning an income from the electricity generated. The key is BESS. This will really unleash the sun’s ability to power the world.
Q:Due to the foreign exchange crisis and importation restrictions in Sri Lanka, how can we develop the infrastructure and implement emobility programs in Sri Lanka in an affordable manner?
A. This is another very interesting question that challenges policymakers. Again, zooming out of the reason for the foreign exchange crisis must be identified and remedial strategies must be adopted.
The foreign exchange crisis does not seem to be a product of the Easter Sunday tragedy, or the pandemic, or the present Government’s reduction of taxes. The cause of it strikes me as decades of fiscal and trade deficits, which were bridged by debt funding, showing the need for structural change.
Given the foreign exchange crisis, one cannot expect the import of vehicles to happen in 2022 or even in 2023. With a vehicle parc of over 7 million registered vehicles, a detailed needs assessment is required to ascertain if we need more vehicles, and if the available road infrastructure can sustain an increasing vehicle parc.
Steps can be taken to enhance the efficiency of the vehicle park, by encouraging the use of shared mobility solutions, such as Uber and PickMe.
A study conducted in Ann Arbor, Michigan, found that a shared fleet could provide instantaneous access to a vehicle using 15 percent of the total current private fleet. Another study conducted in Zurich found that if waiting times up to 10 minutes for a shared fleet-vehicle were acceptable, a reduction of up to 90% of the total current fleet could be possible without active fleet management, such as fleet redistribution. Privately owned cars had an average utilisation rate of 4 percent, which research suggested could be increased to 40 percent if autonomy was coupled with ride-sharing.
Emission standards can be increased, and the use of bio-fuel additives to reduce carbon emissions can be adopted. Emission testing can also be introduced for all registered vehicles, with non-compliant vehicles being taken off the road while demand management can be introduced. Green funds could be obtained to create an electric city bus network that affords commuters a positive travel experience, to encourage the use of public transport.
Q:What are the Government’s policies and support in promoting it in Sri Lanka?
A. E-mobility is a switch from the present System of mobility to something new. Together with this switch, must also come a movement from owned mobility solutions to shared mobility solutions.
The key factor in creating this switch successfully, is to implement multi-faceted policies, as recommended in the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce report, concurrently. This will propel the shift towards e-mobility, and this shift is needed if we are to comply with the commitments we have given towards the reduction of the increase in GHG emissions.
The ban on vehicle imports presents the perfect time for the Government to introduce the policy framework that will be in effect when vehicle imports are permitted. This gives the industry and everyone in the mobility ecosystem time to be prepared for this shift.
Sri Lanka can be an early adopter, and private sector led policy recommendations seem to have been accepted by the Government. One hopes the Government will implement these policies and drive their adoption.