How long can we burn our fossil fuels before they are gone forever?
When the oil, gas and coal runs out, and it will run out, what will be our alternative?
Humanity needs to find innovative ways to generate the power we need.
Ways that can last forever.
Meet Lucky.
I thought I'd like to make Sri Lanka the first fossil fuel free country in the world.
When I hear overwhelming statements like that, I think to myself, OK, let's see if you can do it.
We are going to make a transition from a fossil fuel-based economy with all that inktails
and in that lies the biggest business opportunity you can imagine.
I think my passion for not green energy per se but the environment has been extremely long-standing.
I did my PhD in environmental economics way back last century and I really want to make a difference.
So I became an investment banker and my goal is to marry the passion I have for the environment
but use financial markets in order to facilitate a value to the environment.
So that's where my motivation comes from.
Well, I'm sorry, as an investor, that's who we invest in and this is who we invest in.
We don't invest in you because they're the managers that need to be able to run this company.
It was our fault because we didn't give them time, we didn't give them enough time.
They were not geared for this.
I'm part of the eco team that goes out, checks out the site, talks to the management,
kicking the tires of the company.
We're going to be looking at a different type of renewable energy that they have here in Sri Lanka
and it gives us an opportunity to see what kind of technology is out there.
And that's a glirsydia right there.
And that's a glirsydia.
And they have to cut it up.
It's quite sustainable, it's a fast growing plant and they use this, they use the coppest,
not the main tree, to run the, to get energy.
So they have to coppice it anyway and it was just waste before and now it can be used for energy.
This is three months.
How about this one, how about these, the bigger ones?
It expands, you have to cut again.
If you want more wood, you have to wait longer, otherwise you can cut earlier.
Because the leaves are what they use for the soil.
So the plan now is to scale this up into a 10 megawatt power plant,
which would have a 30 kilometre radius,
whereby we would actually obtain the glirsydia from farmers within that 30 kilometres.
It would mean that 50 people would be employed directly in the power plant
and about 2,000 farmers would derive income from supplying us the wood.
And if you think about it from a family perspective, that would affect about 8,000 individuals.
Within this area would earn extra income.
And so you have a major case of poverty alleviation.
We are at Ganwarua, Peradene, the agriculture department demonstration park.
What they are doing here is the model that we are recommending to farmers to grow glirsydia,
in what is called the alley cropping.
You are not going glirsydia by itself.
It is always done, mixed.
So intercropping.
I would go step beyond. It is just not a mixed plantation.
It is a synergistic approach.
Each one helps other.
They have got corn growing along with glirsydia,
always with the alley of glirsydia trees,
and in between a cash crop.
We are here to look at the gasifier which we have installed here as a demonstration unit.
Good gasifier produces a producer gas, which is highly combustible.
This is the glirsydia sticks, which is the fuel for the gasifier.
What it does is it runs the generator and then the generator creates the electricity
that is then distributed out.
And instead of using fossil fuel for the generator, you use this clean fuel.
But that shows you that you can, for a village, you know, have energy
without having to drop a fossil fuel anywhere.
And it can be from a local area.
So self-sustaining again, you know, without having all these outside inputs.
Separate from the glirsydia project, future energy is also looking at municipal waste.
There is a project which we are working in collaboration with in Kendi,
making waste and creating that into energy.
So what you have here is rubbish.
And the point is to take this and convert it to that,
where all you've done is you put the garbage with the polythene layer underneath
and cover it up so it's less of an eyesore.
And as it ferments, it gives off methane, which we can burn and create energy.
And prevent the water table from being polluted from the toxicity
of the smoldering, decomposing waste by putting it through this polythene layer.
We have the alive layer of waste polythene and clay, which purifies.
It's a biofilter.
And what is coming out of it is after the liner, you get pure water coming out of here.
And so there are two projects, one in Kendi, one in Colombo,
both of which I want to get funded for 10 megawatts.
Back in Colombo, New Van, we're off to go see a few people today,
as well as the Minister for Power and Energy.
Quite an important figure when it comes to energy, policy, etc.
We have to have some sort of awareness among our intellectuals,
among our people about this renewable energy.
Because this oil and coal mafia are very powerful lobby.
So that they can mislead our people.
The first coal power plant is being constructed.
And we are hoping to commission that next year.
Sometime back, we from outside were talking about the oil mafia.
But like the Minister himself said, there's a coal mafia also.
So that is what has to be realized.
By having 102 coal power plants, I don't think we are causing much damage.
We are emitting much greenhouse gas.
We investors are taking all of the risk to make this country energy self-sufficient.
Yet the government and the energy authority, they don't care.
Well, the government is always welcoming people who have to come for renewable energy development.
The development needs to come through the correct use of energy.
I don't think that it has to be coal.
I'm just not sold on the fact that if we don't go down the coal route,
we don't get energy fast enough so we can't develop.
That seems too linear for me and develop itself is so incredibly complex
that I think they're selling themselves way too short.
From this country standpoint, it would show you can actually redirect
some of that very, very expensive amount of money that we are sending out of this country
to buy imported oil and coal that actually we can redirect just a little bit of it
and you can raise the standard of living for so many people
because they will have money and they will have energy.
So there's nothing groundbreaking about it because everything's been done before.
It just hasn't been done in this fashion, that's all.
