‘Energy pathway calculator’ launches in Bangladesh

Bangladesh has launched an online calculator that can compute the impacts on climate change and food security due to energy generation until 2050.

Senior Correspondentbdnews24.com
Published : 8 Jan 2015, 09:03 PM
Updated : 8 Jan 2015, 09:17 PM

It is an innovative web-based computer model, showing the country's energy demand and supply and how they interact with the country’s greenhouse gas emissions reduction target.

Styled ‘Bangladesh 2050 Energy Pathway’s Calculator’ (BD2050), this is the first-of-its-kind online software model that integrates energy generation and usage, and is tied to carbon emissions and the use of land in Bangladesh.

It can help policymakers to choose which energy source should be used for less climate impacts.

Available to the public, users can try and balance energy sources against energy demand between now and 2050 and see what impact that will have on the country.

A team of researchers of Cardiff University led by British-origin Bangladeshi Dr Monjur Mourshed tailored the calculator for Bangladesh.

The UK’s Department for Energy and Climate Change, and Bangladesh’s Ministry of Power, Energy and Mineral Resources supported the endeavour.

This is the 11th calculator the UK department launched and first for any least developed country.
“Our calculator is being used in the UK, Japan, China and India,” Dr Mourshed said after the launch at a Dhaka hotel on Thursday.
He added, “BD2050 is designed to enable the Bangladesh Government and the public to explore high-level energy, economy and emission pathway options and their impacts on land-use, electricity, energy security and food.”
The calculator can be accessed by anyone, giving opportunity to all sectors of society to influence, debate and lobby with energy-informed discussion.
“This is the power of this calculator. Governments know the impacts of any energy source choice that a general person may not know. But using this calculator they will be able to know what the government knows,” Dr Mourshed further said.
British High Commissioner in Dhaka Robert Gibson launching the calculator explained why Bangladeshis needed to use it.
He said access to energy services was a pre-condition for development and Bangladesh, despite its vulnerability to climate change, had been experiencing sustained economic growth for more than a decade.
“But now it faces big choices on the kind of energy infrastructure that it should develop.”
“And that is a growing challenge,” Gibson noted, adding that this calculator would help the researchers and decision makers today to “make the right energy investment for tomorrow”.
Dr Saleemul Huq, Director, International Centre for Climate Change and Development said at the launch “even though Bangladesh’s own emissions of greenhouse gases are presently low, nevertheless as a good global citizen it must find ways to develop on a low Carbon development pathway.
“The Carbon Calculator developed with British assistance is an excellent tool to help Bangladesh plan such a low carbon development pathway.”