Renewable energy still ‘not attractive’ as business in Bangladesh

State Minister for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Nasrul Hamid has said that promoting renewable energy as business is “difficult” in Bangladesh due to resource constraints and land shortage.

Despite that, he said, the government had set a target of obtaining 10 percent of power from renewable sources by 2020.

“You cannot compare us with Denmark or other developed countries. Denmark’s per capita income is $45000, but ours is only $1400. Other countries which are promoting renewable energy have per capita incomes of over $25000,” he said on Sunday.

“Renewable energy is very expensive. We have given out over 300 projects, but no one has become successful so far,” he said, speaking at a seminar on “Answering the challenges to adoption of farm waste to energy technology in Bangladesh” in Dhaka.

The International Finance Corporation (IFC), which is a member of the World Bank Group and finances and provides advice for private sector ventures and projects in developing countries in partnership with the government, organised the seminar.

The Danish Ambassador in Bangladesh, Mikael Hemniti Winther, Member of the Sustainable Renewable Energy Development Authority Siddique Zobair and IFC Country Manager Wendy Jo Werner also spoke, among others, on the occasion.

“We are crowded. We don’t have land and day by day we are becoming energy hungry. Now we cannot think of electricity up to 20,000 MW; we have to think in terms of 60,000 MW of electricity,” the state minister said.

“But for only a 100 MW solar power project, we need 300 acres of non-agricultural land, which is difficult to find in Bangladesh,” he said.

“We have to create business models. When people see the benefits, then they will do that,” he said, emphasising raising awareness about renewable energy.

The IFC Operations Officer, clean energy, Muhammad Taif Ul Islam, said Bangladesh could produce 620 GWh per year only from farm waste, but the potential remained “untapped”, he said.

But the private sector was still not getting interested in investing renewable energy generation, he said.

“There are lots of issues. They are not seeing anything encouraging. There is no such example to make them believe after seeing,” he said. “There is alsoa knowledge gap”.

The IFC with the help of the Danish government has set up a Green Energy Knowledge Hub at the Agriculture University in Mymensingh for research and development of energy technology from waste.