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Renewable energy resources turned out to be the second cheapest source of electricity, after gas, in the 2021-22 financial year, according to Power Development Board data.
In the past financial year, the cost of each unit of electricity generated by renewable energy — mainly solar power — in private plants slightly increased, about 2 per cent, to Tk 13, compared with the previous financial year.
Generating a unit of electricity, on the other hand, from coal in the financial year took about 80 per cent more — Tk 16 — than it did in the year before while the cost of generating a unit of electricity from furnace oil went up by about 40 per cent to Tk 17.
The cost of generating one unit of electricity using natural gas rose up by 7 per cent to Tk 4 amidst the government cutting back on electricity generation from costly natural gas.
The cost of electricity production using diesel, on the contrary, dropped by 28 per cent, mainly because of a whopping 118 per cent increase in the diesel capacity use, but a unit of electricity generated by diesel still cost Tk 36, almost three times the cost of producing power from renewable resources.
In public power plants, a unit of renewable electricity, mainly generated from hydro energy, cost Tk 6 while a unit of gas electricity cost Tk 3, coal electricity Tk 9, furnace oil electricity Tk 22 and diesel electricity Tk 162.
The overall average cost of generating a unit of electricity increased eventually to Tk 9 in the past financial year from Tk 8 the year before mainly thanks to the energy crisis triggered by the Covid pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war.
‘Recent global crises, especially the Russia-Ukraine war, made it clear that energy security cannot be ensured depending on others,’ Mohammad Hossain, director general, Power Cell, told New Age on Monday.
He revealed that the Power Cell, a government agency responsible for facilitating and reforming the power sector, was working under a project on advising the government on multi-use of agricultural land, particularly for solar electricity generation.
Solar power projects can run without affecting agricultural production, he said, adding that solar panels could be raised at an angle allowing sunlight to reach crops.
‘It is likely that agricultural land will be allowed to be used for solar power projects,’ said Hossain, announcing that 1,000MW solar electricity will be added within the next two years.
Bangladesh can easily generate 10,000MW electricity using solar energy and another 2,000MW from wind power, he said.
Allocating just 1 per cent of the country’s agricultural land can mean Bangladesh generating 50,000MW electricity from solar energy, showed an estimate by energy expert Ijaz Hossain.
In 2020, the draft national solar energy roadmap revealed that Bangladesh commanded solar electricity potential worth 30,000MW if khas and riverside lands could be used by 2041.
Bangladesh currently sources 910MW electricity from renewable resources, accounting for less than 4 per cent of the total 25,700MW installed electricity generation capacity, 14 years after its renewable energy policy targeted to generate 10 per cent of the total electricity supply by 2020.
Had the renewable energy policy been implemented, Bangladesh would have produced 2,500MW renewable electricity by now to bypass the energy crisis resulting in rotating power outages as more and more diesel and gas power plants had to be shut down.
A fourth of Bangladesh’s current renewable electricity capacity actually has been existing since 1957 from hydro energy.
Bangladesh got its first grid-tied solar power plant in 2017 despite pursuing an aggressive power expansion policy, increasing the total installed generation capacity by over five times since 2009.
‘Bangladesh has not been sincere in fulfilling its renewable energy commitments,’ said Shahriar Ahmed Chowdhury, director, Centre for Energy Research, United International University.
Apart from the decision of not using agricultural land for purposes other than food production, high import duties on solar technology materials along with VAT held back renewable electricity expansion, he said.
‘Withdrawing import duties could easily bring down the per unit electricity generation cost from rooftop solar photovoltaic cells to Tk 4.5 from its current cost of Tk 6,’ said Shahriar, also the author of the draft solar energy roadmap.
Globally, according to the draft solar energy roadmap, the average installed cost of solar power plants dropped by 80 per cent between 2010 and 2019.
The potential of other renewable energy resources such as wind, bioenergy and geothermal energy is largely unexplored in Bangladesh.
But neighbouring countries have made strides in exploring renewable energy potentials.
India, for instance, has developed 40 per cent of its installed power generation capacity of over 4 lakh MW from renewable energy, including 54,000MW solar electricity.
Vietnam, on the other hand, commands 16 GW of solar electricity.
‘We must not forget about the variability of renewable electricity,’ said Ijaz Hossain, referring to the limitation that solar electricity could only be generated during the day.
Still, costly peaking power plants could have been replaced with renewable energy years ago, he said.
The peaking plants based on fossil fuels became a massive burden on Bangladesh paying Tk 72,567 crore in capacity charge from FY11 to FY21.
Bangladesh’s current economic crisis is blamed, by economists and energy experts, largely on the wrong energy policy of almost entirely developing its power capacity on imported fossil fuels.
The high international energy market continues to threaten Bangladesh’s stability, setting off a severe foreign currency crisis and food inflation, reasons Pakistan and Sri Lanka plunged into their current political and economic predicament.
Bangladesh first felt the heat of volatile international energy market in late 2020 as big economies needed more and more energy to regain their strength in the aftermath of the Covid pandemic.
The energy crisis deepened when the war between Russia and Ukraine broke out in late February, prompting fears about a potential global food crisis, particularly after prices multiplied.
Bangladesh, in the midst of generating 6,468MW electricity from liquefied natural gas, suddenly found European nations as its competitors on the LNG spot market, where the LNG price increased over 25 times compared with its price in June 2020.
A report released in August by the US-based Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis warned that high LNG prices threatened to cancel or falter $96.7 billion investment in four south and southeast Asian countries, including Bangladesh.
Since beginning LNG import in 2018, Bangladesh could not mitigate its energy crisis anyway but rather had to repeatedly increase its gas and electricity prices.
‘What current global problems expose is not the cost effectiveness of renewable energy resources but its importance in ensuring energy security,’ said Ijaz Hossain.
‘Nobody can deny us sunlight,’ he said, reminding, ‘There is a point where even food security depends on energy security.’
(NA)
