The project under implementation in Cox’s Bazar, the south of the country, will reduce annual coal consumption by 44,600 tons, and cut emissions of 109,200 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2), 25.2 tons of sulfur dioxide, and 50.7 tons of nitrogen oxide every year. Commissioning of the complex will make it possible to multiply the capacity of the wind turbines operating in the country, which was only 3 MW in 2021. According to this indicator, the WPPs were inferior to solar panels (329 MW), hydropower plants (230 MW) and bioenergy plants (5 MW). However, fossil fuels still remain a key source of electricity. The installed capacity of gas-fired power plants in Bangladesh reached 10.8 GW last year, while it reached 1.9 GW and 2.6 GW for coal-fired and oil-fired power plants, respectively. As a result, fossil fuels accounted for 98.5% of generation in 2021.
The traditional energy dominance is largely associated with high availability of fossil resources. Bangladesh is the eighth largest gas producer in the Asia-Pacific region (24.1 billion cubic metres, according to the BP World Energy Review). At the same time, the country is among ten largest importers of coal from Indonesia, which remains one of the leading suppliers of this raw material to the world market. This has facilitated electrification in Bangladesh: in 2005, only 44% of households had access to electricity, but in 2015, it was already 75%, and in 2020 – 96%, according to the World Bank.
The power grid development has become one of the drivers of the electricity demand growth: generation from all the sources in Bangladesh grew from 27 TWh in 2005 to 62 TWh in 2015 and 89 TWh in 2020. At the end of 2021, the country increased generation by 10.2% (up to 98 TWh), which became the second indicator in the Asia-Pacific region after Pakistan, where generation increase reached 12.7%.
