Sri Lanka’s fuel consumption almost doubled: Energy Minister

Apr 09, 2015 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s fuel consumption has doubled after the reduction of fuel cost by the new regime’s interim budget 2015, Minister of Power and Energy, Patali Champika Ranawaka said.











“We reduced the cost of fuel and thought that the people would put the savings in other investment,” “But we found that fuel consumption has gone up and in some fuel there was a 50 percent rise.” He was speaking at the opening ceremony of Sri Lanka’s first Green Energy Zone in Colombo. Ranawaka also said the Island can make an annual saving of 500 million dollars by reducing electricity consumption by 10 percent.

“If we can save 10 per cent of electricity consumption then we can save 500 million dollars annually.

This is the income we get from tourism industry,” Minister Ranawaka said. “If we reduce say 5-10 per cent consumption then there is another advantage that is that we can also reduce our thermal power generation cost as thermal generation is very expensive.



” The annual total electricity demand in the country is about 10,500 Giga-watt hours, comprising 38 per cent from domestic consumers, 39 per cent from industries, 20 per cent from commercial enterprises and balance from religious organizations and lighting. The total energy requirement of the country was 11,125 ktoe (Kilotonne of Oil Equivalent) in 2013 and the primary energy supply mainly consisted of biomass, fossil fuels and hydro.







Accordingly, 56 per cent of total energy consumption is from indigenous (biomass and hydro) and the island has to import fossil fuels to bridge the gap. Currently about 51 percent of electrical energy is produced by coal and about 20 percent by diesel and furnace oil in the Island while about 20 percent of power is produce by hydro.