The Colombo metropolitan region faces serious congestion problems. More than 190 million passenger trips occur daily in Colombo metropolitan region, and the average travel speed is 12 km/hour. With population growth, this congestion is set to increase.
The Colombo light rail transit project is the first of its kind to be developed in Colombo. The system will connect highly industrialised areas, and aims to reduce traffic congestion, and encourage citizens to make use of affordable, convenient and low emissions forms of public transportation.
Even though Sri Lanka’s share of global greenhouse gas emission is small, in recent years, Sri Lanka’s economy has seen significant emissions growth. Emissions from transport make up a significant share of the country’s emissions profile. The aim of this Green Climate Fund programme is to demonstrate the use of an electric bus network to feed passengers into notes of the light rail transit system, and hence take diesel busses and cars off the road.
BASE supported UN Environment and local partner Janathakshan Ltd. to develop and design a Green Climate Fund concept note to scale up electric mobility in Colombo.
The proposed programme aims to demonstrate that electric buses can replace the current inefficient fleet of diesel buses, and to show that it is feasible to establish renewable energy charging stations that help to establish a cleaner and more stable grid.
The buses have a swapping battery technology that allows replacement of the battery in less than 3 minutes once the battery is discharged. The batteries are charged at strategic distributed charging stations that are powered by renewable energy sources, the charging stations provide an automated system to replace the bus batteries when they require a new batch of charged batteries.
The programme will help to stimulate the local market for the use of electric busses and the infrastructure to feed into nodes of the upcoming Colombo Light Rail Transit (LRT) System in Sri Lanka.
The programme will contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from the transport sector, which accounts for a significant share of greenhouse gas emissions in Sri Lanka. The programme will also contribute to the creation of a more favourable environment for sustainable transport financing over the long term. The electric buses and the RE power charging stations also contribute to health and development outcomes through reduced air particulate pollution, reduced traffic congestion, and a much better quality of transport service.
