Electric vehicles the key for a clean Vientiane
For Laos, and Vientiane specifically, the work that Sunlabob and LIRE have done has shown that electric vehicles in the inner urban area are actually the best option to preserve the air quality and health of the residents of the capital.
Laos is booming, nowhere is that more visible than in Vientiane, with the capital city growing in population by 5% per year and due to double in size in the next 20 years. Lao people are seeing huge increases in service provision and opportunity, but as the city grows, it has to face up to a difficult problem _ its air quality is getting worse. The geographical location of Vientiane is partly to blame; with wind speeds typically only a couple of metres per second, the vehicle pollution does not really blow away from the city.
But now with vehicle numbers growing at around 14% per year in Vientiane over the past 10 years, the city has to face up to the huge challenge of dealing with air quality issues. It is internally constrained, and authorities have concluded that building lots of faster new roads will be hard and often impossible.
Simply put, the number of people in Vientiane is growing at 5% a year but the number of vehicles is rising by 14%, leading to almost four times as many vehicles as 10 years ago, in a city increasingly choked with traffic and smoke.
But Laos, the self-declared "Battery of Asia", has a huge amount of affordable electricity. And this is the fuel of the future for Laos and the key to developing Vientiane as a clean city and solving its worsening air quality problems. Sunlabob, with the Lao Institute for Renewable Energy, and a consortium of other partners, have identified that electric vehicles, especially tuk tuks, can viably replace large numbers of the iconic smoking tuk-tuks of Vientiane and transform the city.
By making the centre of the city a low-emissions zone and bringing in electric vehicles, many of which can be financed and paid for by carbon-credit financing money, Sunlabob and the institute are trying to make Vientiane the model Asean city for clean electric vehicles and even cleaner air.
Not many cities have the same geographical constraints as Vientiane, in terms of air quality, but all should be able to learn from the lesson of Vientiane if it is possible to bring government and donors together effectively to partner in this vital project. And it is not just Vientiane where this technology can work; indeed, almost all the major cities in Laos will face the same issue in coming years especially the famous Unesco World Heritage site, the city of Luang Prabang.
The issue of charging stations is often raised as a constraint to electric vehicles, and there are three main ways that we solve this problem:
- The vehicles have solar panels on their roofs to charge up as they sit parked in the hot sun; this is extremely affordable and safe.
- In Laos most of the tuk tuks and heavy vehicles return in the evenings to the same locations, and so the charging stations just need to be there.
- Every vehicle has a charger built in so it can just charge from any mains power socket overnight. But with the typical battery of an electric tuk tuk giving a range of 60-80 km, this is more than the typical distance travelled by a tuk tuk in each working day.
Electric vehicles are seen as very new technology, but electricity is distributed into all our homes already, and in fact many early cars around 1900 were electric. Electricity is the fuel of the future, as it is available almost everywhere. And it is the green fuel of the future when we produce it from clean, renewable sources. We are trying hard to produce more electricity from renewable sources already as part of our power-development plans in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase energy security.
And in this age of great concerns about food security, and land taken up to grow energy crops, producing electricity takes up far less land than, for example, producing biofuels. And the importance for farmers to grow food, not fuel, for Asia's fast-growing populations is greater than ever.
For Laos, and Vientiane specifically, the work that Sunlabob and LIRE have done has shown that electric vehicles in the inner urban area are actually the best option to preserve the air quality and health of the residents of the capital.
The barrier is not technical. The technologies are well-proven and increasingly affordable, but institutional. Within even 12 months it would probably be possible to bring in 3,000 electric tuk tuks to Vientiane, but it takes this vital partnership with institutions and financing groups to seize this viable opportunity.
Electric vehicles are no longer a novelty, but a viable urban development option, and ideally suited to Southeast Asian cities. And for Laos, electric vehicles are vital for Vientiane to become the capital of clean air in the "Battery of Asia".
Edward Allen is a technical programme coordinator at Lao Institute for Renewable Energy and the Technical Adviser to Sunlabob Renewal Energy. He holds a BA in Geography from Oxford University, and an MSc and Diploma of Agriculture from Imperial College London (Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development).
But now with vehicle numbers growing at around 14% per year in Vientiane over the past 10 years, the city has to face up to the huge challenge of dealing with air quality issues. It is internally constrained, and authorities have concluded that building lots of faster new roads will be hard and often impossible.
Simply put, the number of people in Vientiane is growing at 5% a year but the number of vehicles is rising by 14%, leading to almost four times as many vehicles as 10 years ago, in a city increasingly choked with traffic and smoke.
But Laos, the self-declared "Battery of Asia", has a huge amount of affordable electricity. And this is the fuel of the future for Laos and the key to developing Vientiane as a clean city and solving its worsening air quality problems. Sunlabob, with the Lao Institute for Renewable Energy, and a consortium of other partners, have identified that electric vehicles, especially tuk tuks, can viably replace large numbers of the iconic smoking tuk-tuks of Vientiane and transform the city.
By making the centre of the city a low-emissions zone and bringing in electric vehicles, many of which can be financed and paid for by carbon-credit financing money, Sunlabob and the institute are trying to make Vientiane the model Asean city for clean electric vehicles and even cleaner air.
Not many cities have the same geographical constraints as Vientiane, in terms of air quality, but all should be able to learn from the lesson of Vientiane if it is possible to bring government and donors together effectively to partner in this vital project. And it is not just Vientiane where this technology can work; indeed, almost all the major cities in Laos will face the same issue in coming years especially the famous Unesco World Heritage site, the city of Luang Prabang.
The issue of charging stations is often raised as a constraint to electric vehicles, and there are three main ways that we solve this problem:
- The vehicles have solar panels on their roofs to charge up as they sit parked in the hot sun; this is extremely affordable and safe.
- In Laos most of the tuk tuks and heavy vehicles return in the evenings to the same locations, and so the charging stations just need to be there.
- Every vehicle has a charger built in so it can just charge from any mains power socket overnight. But with the typical battery of an electric tuk tuk giving a range of 60-80 km, this is more than the typical distance travelled by a tuk tuk in each working day.
Electric vehicles are seen as very new technology, but electricity is distributed into all our homes already, and in fact many early cars around 1900 were electric. Electricity is the fuel of the future, as it is available almost everywhere. And it is the green fuel of the future when we produce it from clean, renewable sources. We are trying hard to produce more electricity from renewable sources already as part of our power-development plans in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase energy security.
And in this age of great concerns about food security, and land taken up to grow energy crops, producing electricity takes up far less land than, for example, producing biofuels. And the importance for farmers to grow food, not fuel, for Asia's fast-growing populations is greater than ever.
For Laos, and Vientiane specifically, the work that Sunlabob and LIRE have done has shown that electric vehicles in the inner urban area are actually the best option to preserve the air quality and health of the residents of the capital.
The barrier is not technical. The technologies are well-proven and increasingly affordable, but institutional. Within even 12 months it would probably be possible to bring in 3,000 electric tuk tuks to Vientiane, but it takes this vital partnership with institutions and financing groups to seize this viable opportunity.
Electric vehicles are no longer a novelty, but a viable urban development option, and ideally suited to Southeast Asian cities. And for Laos, electric vehicles are vital for Vientiane to become the capital of clean air in the "Battery of Asia".
Edward Allen is a technical programme coordinator at Lao Institute for Renewable Energy and the Technical Adviser to Sunlabob Renewal Energy. He holds a BA in Geography from Oxford University, and an MSc and Diploma of Agriculture from Imperial College London (Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development).
Posted by samakomlao
on 8:41 AM. Filed under
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nice..but how da fck the poor people who already the old tuk tuk afford this?
I paid $60bucks for a brand new battery for my personal tuk tuk guy, and he was so happy it was like a new ride to him.
I'd recommendation to Lao PDR government not to go ever board or too crazy about this Global warming thing. What I like to see is: pay attention to developing the economic and created a job for laos and lao people not to leave a country and works else where. Laos is still virgine if compare other part of Asia. Look at China and India, both got examp from the United Nation for polluted neighboring countries.