For four years, the government is talking about generating 800MW power from renewable energy by 2015; butwith only a year and half left, less than a fourth of that target has been achieved.
Lack of planning and absence of an enabling guideline are deemed to have made only 5% of the total generation capacity so hard to achieve.
That has also made the 2000MW-target of generating renewable energy-fuelled electricity by 2020 look more distant, with only 140MW coming from renewable sources at present, that too mostly from solar.
In order to curb dependence on fossil fuel and explore renewable energy sources, the government has formulated the “Renewable Energy Policy 2010,”which is now at the revision stage.
While announcing the FY2010-11 budget, Finance Minister AMA Muhith first tossed the idea of generating 5% of the total capacity with renewable sources.
This year too, the booklet on the energy sector, titled “Development in power and energy sector: A Journey of Success” that accompanied the minister’s speech text, expressed the same hopes.
This year, as an improvement, the minister has announced forming a special Tk400 crore fund for setting up renewable energy-based power plants; but once again, the budget lacks any definitive directive about how to reach 800MW from the current 140MW.
According to the booklet, the highest 116MW power comes from solar home systems; 11MW from solar PVs installed in new buildings; energy efficiency efforts at government
offices and agencies, commercial building and shopping centres fetch around 4MW.
The share of power from other sources such as wind, biomass, biogas and solar irrigation are 2MW, 1MW, 5MW and 1MW respectively.
Initially, it was thought that the country has enormous solar power potential. However, because of high installation cost of generation units and lack of government effort to make them cheaper, this source came out to be no good, at least in the urban areas.
Some professionals deemed wind power as another potential source of energy, especially in the coastal districts and the offshore islands; but some studies on wind mapping could not see the due success.
Around two years ago, the government formed the Sustainable and Renewable Energy Development Authority (SREDA), in a bid to guide the country towards a future of sustainable power.
However, SREDA saw very little progress in two years, except for the appointment of its chairman, resulting in difficulties for interested public entities and private entrepreneurs.
“The government perhaps will not be able to achieve the target [of generating 800MW by 2015]. A new deadline should be fixed,” said Prof Saiful Haque of the Institute of Renewable Energy of Dhaka University.
“If the government takes more time in making SREDA effective, the renewable energy programme will not get a decent shape,” he suggested.