Sri Lanka, July 10 -- Plans to reduce the unit cost of electricity offered to rooftop solar power will have a severe negative impact on the industry as well as the national economy, the Solar Industries Association (SIA) said at a press conference yesterday in Colombo.

An immediate stand-still of the industry with a large number of job losses will occur resulting in major barriers for achieving the Government's policy of 80% renewables by 2030. "We have reasons to believe that a conspiracy is been attempted to disrupt the local entrepreneurship in the solar industry and to change the government policy in a subtle way," Secretary, SIA, Lakmal Fernando said.

Currently 25,000 solar systems supply 270 MW to the National Grid. In order to ac...