The Irrigation and Water Management Ministry in collaboration with the Power and Energy Ministry will construct a large scale hydro electricity plant in Wellawaya to generate 300 GWH. This plant will be able to generate power and add 300 GWH to the National Grid, the Irrigation and Water Management Ministry said.

Energy experts believe Sri Lanka should now tap all possible renewable energy sources to cut down on the use of fossil fuels which comes to the country at a high price.

"Our economy will fall behind if we continue spending on foreign oil and coal every year," said Executive Director Energy Forum Ashoka Abeygunawardane at a recent workshop in Colombo.

The Iran Aid Project, Asian Development Bank, International Co-operative agency and NORAD have granted loans for the provision of projects to provide electricity to the villages in the North and East under the concept of providing electricity to the villages islandwide, the Power and Energy Ministry said.

The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) Energy Ministers

The Government recently approved an ADB funded project to improve electricity services and support renewable energy. The ADB will provide a loan of US$ 164 million while counterpart funds from the Government of Sri Lanka would be an equivalent of US$ 24 million , LBO reported.

Our parents and grandparents were conservationists by instinct. All the more credit to them as fancy terms had not yet been invented - like reduce, re-use and re-cycle as recipes. Nor of Global Warming, Energy Budgets and Ozone Holes. They simply believed that it was sensible and proper that materials be used maximally or given away rather than being rubbished.

Under the Rural Electrification Scheme, the Power and Energy Ministry has supplied electricity to Mimaduma electorate where around 1000 families live. The people in this electorate have lived 30 years without electricity facilities, the Power and Energy Ministry said.

The world is still trying hard to over come the double crisis of sky rocketing energy prices, as well as the increasing costs and fears of food shortages. Some of the options being proposed and tried out in some countries, by converting food grains into bio fuels is being blamed at least partly for the increasing cost of food.

The Power and Energy Ministry will conduct a workshop, at the Heritance, Kandalama, on bio fuels to impart training on the production of bio fuels.
Power and Energy Ministry sources said that the objective of organizing the training program on the production of bio fuels was to impart training to selected participants from the member States to help them acquire knowledge on the available technology and future prospects on bio fuels.

Bio gas is the answer for three major problems: environment management, energy management and agri system management, President of the Lanka Biogas Assosiation, Professor Ajith de Alwis, said at the launch of Biogas Association yesterday. Sri Lanka must try to promote bio gas as a technology. Though in the past bio gas was considered a poor man's technology, it is well accepted and recognized for its triple importance and the unique capabilities of the process.