Renewable Power Should Replace High Pollution Coal Plants In Tropical Sri Lanka
Dr. M.W.N. Dharmawardene
Readers should be thankful to recent articles in Colombo Telegraph on options on power generation for Sri Lanka focusing on the use of coal as the most suitable option, which has opened up a very useful discussion on its merits and future power generation plan for Sri Lanka. This is most opportune as the new government is looking at various options available to it bring about a rapid growth together with employment creation.
Obviously, power generation has a prime seat in this context as one unit of power is nearly equivalent to one unit of GDP as GDP growth is a mirror image of power generation. If this exercise can be coupled to employment creation, then power generation becomes a prime candidate in government options for country development.
In the discussion thru Colombo Telegraph, coal power was considered as the prime candidate to fill the gap ignoring the greatest danger paused to the general public of having highly polluting Coal power plants as against zero emission renewable power systems.
The purpose of this brief note is to show the greatest threat to humanity is thru highly polluting coal power, metalloids & metallic elements, and the soot poisoning the air and their ill effects, which once liberated to biosphere cannot be reversed and all coal power plants are known to do so and thus developed countries have ceased to use coal power while the power requirement of Sri Lanka could be met thru developing its renewable power resources which have zero emission and creates plenty of job opportunities where it is mostly needed.
Of all the fossil power sources in the world coal has been proven to be the dirtiest & irreversible polluter which causes greatest misery to man & biosphere through its emission of mercury. One of the highest sources of pollution of air, water & food including staples like rice, fish & meat is already proven to be Mercury from Coal burning for power and heat & its use in gold mining & chemical industries.
Levels as low as 55mcg/L of blood is considered the beginning of neurotoxic level. The infamous Minimata disease of Japan which caused irreversible brain damage, loss of memorary,suffering, crippling of limbs & death as well as loss of hair, kidney & other organ failures are already well documented.
Mercury pollution in Asia- A review of Contaminated sites by Li etal (2009) in J of Hazardous Material is good eye opener to those who are blind to reality. Unlike any other, Hg once released into environment is not degraded but converted to more toxic alky mercury compounds which accumulate in the food chain like fish & rice, the common staples of general population. It shows, in the Asian world map, Sri Lanka was considered to be free of Hg pollution in 2009, and let us keep to that even at loss of coal powered plants, but countries such as China, India, Philippines, Indonesia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Israel & Kuwait already suffering and all are moving away from dirty coal to other zero emission sources for power.
