Bangladesh’s energy security remains a far cry

Even after spending billions of dollars in the energy sector, energy poverty still remains an acute problem for the majority of Bangladesh households as they do not have adequate access to electricity and clean cooking fuel.

This is both true for the urban and rural households. The truth is the government’s vaunted claim of achieving energy security has just fallen on the ground.

On the occasion of the National Energy Security Day that was observed yesterday in Bangladesh, figures that surfaced in the media are very dismaying.

The Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics in June revealed that, contrary’s access to clean cooking decreased by more than one percent in 2022 compared with the year before.

Moreover, a staggering 72 per cent of the country’s more than 169 million people are depending either on firewood, crop residue, animal dung, or charcoal for energy.

Where is electricity, where is gas?
Not having access to clean cooking takes its toll on life.

According to WHO, in the year 2019, 72 people died per one hundred thousand people in Bangladesh due to a lack of access to clean cooking. Clearly, Bangladesh is suffering from acute energy poverty.

The government was unable to provide electricity to industries even when they wanted to pay more.

A national daily report yesterday made a shocking comparison of electricity consumption among countries of the South Asian region in 2022.

Bangladesh had a per capita energy consumption of 498 kWh in that year, the third lowest in South Asia after landlocked Nepal and war-torn Afghanistan.

In that year, India had a per capita electricity consumption of 1,297kWh, Sri Lanka had a per capita electricity consumption of 775kWh and Pakistan had 645kWh the same year.

But the huge money–$3,900 crore between 2009 and 2022–that Bangladesh spent in the energy sector should have been enough to ensure energy security for people here.

The government indeed announced 100 per cent electrification in March 2022, but as a result of wrong energy policies, this money failed to bear fruit with unbearable load shedding round the year now, but most acutely in the summer.

Having cent percent electricity production capacity is one thing and supplying electricity to each household and meeting the need of industrialisation is totally a different thing.

At present, Bangladesh uses half of its installed electricity capacity of 24,911MW. Still, it is believed that about 12,000MW of the electricity that Bangladesh can generate at present is highly unreliable.

Today, the government is left with little money to buy fuel oil to produce electricity.

The present economic crisis is largely due to energy and power expenses that went down the drain.