Bhutan seeks to spread happiness with electric cars

Bhutan seeks to spread happiness with electric cars

Is Bhutan ready for even “happier” times? While the world is mired in the politics of climate change, Bhutan has announced that it will replace all its government vehicles and taxis with electric cars.

Bhutan plans to soon replace all its taxis and government vehicles with electric cars and buses.

The move, aimed at making the Himalayan kingdom-turned-democracy a global hotspot for electric cars and demonstrating green power, will involve using Nissan Leaf cars to replace fossil fuel-driven vehicles by March.

“If we want to be true to our policy of respecting and conserving the environment, and if we want to be true to sustainable development, we have to put our money where our mouth is,” Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay told Asia Focus.

Tobgay is seen, especially by the international media, as a “happiness sceptic” for his guarded views on Gross National Happiness (GNH), which seeks to measure the nation’s progress in terms of the wellbeing of its people, and not gross domestic product. Tobgay’s predecessor, Jigmi Y. Thinley, on the other hand, was known for promoting the GNH philosophy in the international arena.

The term GNH was coined by the former monarch, King Jigme Singye Wangchuk, in the early 1970s.

But contrary to his initial scepticism, Tobgay’s latest announcement is in keeping with the principles of the GNH model, which also embraces “environmental wellness” as “indicated via direct survey and statistical measurement of environmental metrics such as pollution, noise and traffic”. It is considered one of the important measures of the nation’s happiness index.

“We are not pursuing GNH to impress the world outside,” Economic Affairs Minister Norbu Wangchuk told Asia Focus. “It is a spiritual quest for the country, and the proposal for electric cars is one of the favourite dreams of the new prime minister, and that is actually putting GNH into action.”

Tobgay is reported to have recently met Renault-Nissan chief executive Carlos Ghosn in Thimphu, and is also said to be in talks with other electric carmakers from around the world, including Tesla of the United States.

“We haven’t marked clear timeframes, but by maybe next year we hope to start replacing our taxis,” he said.

Not limiting his ambitions to just seeing people driving electric cars on Bhutan’s roads, Tobgay envisions making Thimphu, the capital, a research and development centre for green vehicles.

“The idea is to become such an attractive area for electric vehicles that we actually attract R&D, and I am hopeful that investors, researchers and manufacturers in the electric vehicle industry would see Thimphu and Bhutan as an opportunity to showcase the real viability of electric vehicles, and I am hopeful that they will use this opportunity to actually tell the world that it is not just possible but also the right thing to do,” he said.

In the next stage, he aims even higher. “We want to be able to assemble our own cars for use as taxis, and in the future we hope to be able to even manufacture, if not fully, most of the components. We hope to be able to manufacture little cars for domestic use. And if the electric cars are good enough — and I don’t see why they wouldn’t be good — we hope to be able to leverage on Bhutan’s clean image to actually attract buyers from outside Bhutan.”

In the long run, it’s not just “environmental wellness” but also the other important GNH metric, “economic wellness”, that this shift to green power is expected to bring about.

“That would also help out in our balance of payments, ensure that we develop sustainably and also ensure that we remain as a carbon sink,” said the prime minister.

Ambitious it is, but is that possible too? “It is possible here,” said Tobgay. “We don’t have any big lobby groups for fossil fuel, so it’s possible.”

Bhutan’s small size and power surplus are the two most important factors. Electricity, drawn from run-of-the-river hydropower plants, is Bhutan’s highest foreign-exchange earner. On the other hand, fossil fuel remains one of its biggest imports. Therefore, according to Tobgay, “it just makes common sense that we should use more electricity and less fossil fuel.”

“Here, distances are short, the price of electricity is very cheap and the quality of electricity is very clean (free from voltage spikes and drops),” he said. “So it’s just a matter of whether we have a political will or not,” he added. Judging from his enthusiasm, it seems political will too has been taken care of.

But for the moment, more immediate concerns are on his mind. “We also need to improve the quality of our roads, which we have to do anyway,” Tobgay said.

He should know, given that his own village in Haa district is still not connected by road, requiring arduous treks, “through the immense rhododendron forest, punctuated by tsamdro meadows”, as he wrote on his blog, tsheringtobgay.com, last May when he was the opposition leader. He was often seen walking for days in his Sombaykha constituency during election campaigns.

In the same blog post, he wrote: “I walked slowly, because from the next time on, I’ll be driving! The farm road being built has almost reached Dorithasa [village]. And from there it will continue to Sombaykha and Gakiling gewog [clusters of villages] centres.

“Once the road is ready, our people will no longer have to make the difficult journey over the mighty Tergola [Pass] on foot. I won’t have to either. We’ll be able to drive.”

In an electric car, even.

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