Sunday Times 2
Electrocuting the environmentalist
If you have been trying save electricity and keep your bill down, remember this: the CEB is after you.
The new tariff announced last week has made one thing obvious. The CEB does not want you to even think of saving electricity. They need the cash; and they are going to squeeze it out of the very people who tried hard in the last few years to keep consumption (and their bills) down.
Come end May, most of us are going to have jaw-dropping shocks. We will have to pay almost double of what we paid in April for the same number of units. That is, unless you are using below 60 units a month, which effectively means you have three bulbs (that too, probably fluorescent) and use a coconut shell iron. The ‘new and improved’ electricity tariff hike which was announced last week will hit hardest those in the middle-usage bracket- that means 90-180 units/month.
This demographic represents the majority of working class families who use a few non-luxury appliances to make their rat-race lives a little easier. These are households without air conditioning, home theatres or flood lit gardens. Hardest hit will be environment conscious individuals (I don’t want to term us environmentalists because that rhymes with fundamentalists). Here, you find people who have tried all kinds of gimmicks to keep usage low, conserve electricity and reduce wastage. Many of us out there switched to CFLs at our own cost, used solar power for some lighting and water heating, disconnected ceiling fans, trashed the electric kettle and sought out the green energy star on appliances. But hey, instead of being rewarded for our consumption-management techniques, this demographic is being penalised for attempting to stay within the previous ‘low’ tariff range.
The environmental lobby and the CEB have always had an uneasy relationship (to put it mildly). The relationship soured as CEB’s love affair with diesel-powered thermals blossomed. I can almost hear some senior engineers out there countering fiercely. Diesels were necessary because ‘environmentalists’ sabotaged important power projects like Norochcholai coal power plant and Upper Kotmale. If Norochcholai happened ten years earlier would we be better off? Your guess is as good as mine.
Meanwhile, the CEB buys power at enormously high rates from private generators. The rot that started in the mid-1990s, when diesel-powered generators were connected to tide over drought-induced hydro-power deficiency, gradually became the mainstay of the CEB’s power supply. Many of these power purchase agreements are (hugely) in favour of the private generator; and today the consumer is being asked to bear the cost of these ill-advised PPAs.
What a normal middle-class household with employed parents would have to pay for their frugal use of electricity is absurd. A family using a fridge, a rice cooker, a washing machine and an electric iron (none of which qualify to be ‘luxury’ in this middle-income country of ours), and consuming between 121 and 180 units, would have to pay between Rs. 4,800 and Rs. 8,000 every month. This includes the 40% fuel surcharge, which effectively means that you are paying for the bad planning and corruption-ridden power purchasing that CEB has engaged in for the past two decades.
So now we are out of ideas. If a middle class household is to keep paying the same as before for electricity, or face a marginal increase, they have to halve consumption. Already many houses are in darkness by nightfall burning just one or two lights in the living room and kitchen. Some simply use the TV to light up the living room. Driven by cost, the consumer is more aware than ever of the need to conserve. But bringing down consumption by half? Is that even possible? Is that fair on working class families who are struggling hard to keep heads above the water?
A state propagandist was heard over SLBC recently preaching to the converted. He was telling people how he saves electricity at home. Ditch rice cookers, he screamed through the wireless, go for the pressure cooker; don’t even touch the microwave; iron just once a week; use fewer lights…what next, one wonders? Sleep outdoors, read under streetlights, take clothes to the public well, employ a dhobi…?The reality of Sri Lanka’s middle income status is that the cost of goods reflects a developed country; whereas our real income is continuously being depleted against inflation, the dollar and what not. Despite public outcry and many submissions to the PUCCSL, the electricity tariff increase is being implemented to the detriment of the working class and the environmentally-conscious. Every year it becomes more expensive and difficult to live up to middle-income expectations. And don’t even think of conserving electricity for environmental reasons: if CEB could, they’d tax you for even thinking that you should.
The writer worked as an environmental journalist and as environmental analyst at United Nations Development Programme.
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