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Import of hydropower, gas from 4 neighbouring states on cards

Says PM's energy adviser

Staff Correspondent
Bangladesh is discussing joint development of hydropower with Nepal, Bhutan and India on one hand and import of gas and power from Myanmar on the other to address the country’s mid-term energy needs, said Energy Adviser to the Prime Minister Dr Tawfiq-e-Elahi Chowdhury ata seminar yesterday.
He said to address the challenge of meeting the nation's energy needs, the government would go ahead with its plan to set up nuclear power plant though there is a renewed concern about public safety.
“Public safety is important. We will go ahead by identifying the risk factors and mitigating them,” Dr Tawfiq said at the seminar on “Quest for energy sufficiency in Bangladesh” organised by Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies (Biiss) at its auditorium.
He stressed the importance of diversifying the country's energy sources to ensure energy security in the mid-term at the discussion with
the BIISS Board of Governors Chairman Major General Muhammed Firdaus Mian, psc in the chair.
Dr Tawfiq said the government has made some progress in regional cooperation for energy. “By 2012, we shall import 250 megawatts of power (from India). This is small. But it is a progress,” he said.
“On coal, we have a different technical challenge — the issue of ground water,” he said at the seminar where many participants advocated using local and imported coal as a cost effective mainstream energy solution.
“It's easy to talk about mining method. But the underground water table is a challenge that we need to understand (before beginning to tap the vast coal resources). The Institute of Water Modelling is currently making a detailed study regarding this,” he said.
He said although renewable energy like solar power or biomass is not mainstream due to high cost and energy storage shortcoming, the government is keeping an eye on the
evolution of the technology as it is becoming cheaper every year. "The world can not afford the current fossil fuel trend,” he said echoing with the forecast that renewable energy would become the mainstream energy in the future.
“We have approached the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to finance setting up 500 megawatts worth of solar energy plants in the country,” he noted.
Besides, he said the government is working for providing clean energy to people in the rural areas where they use wood and other conventional sources for cooking.
By 2020, the country needs to increase power generation by five folds. This would be a huge task requiring huge investment for power and gas development. As part of it, the government needs to invest in exploration of oil and gas. Such investment includes risk of not striking any oil or gas reserves.
BIISS Director General Major General Muhammad Imrul Quayes, ndc, psc spoke at the discussion and senior research fellow Dr M Mahfuz
Kabir presented a paper on an overview of the country's energy sector, Buet Prof Dr Ijaz Hossain on Policies and Strategies on non-renewable energy and Jahangirnager University Associate Professor Dr Shuddhasattwa Rafiq on energy conservation and investment on renewable energy.
Dr Kabir in his presentation said there are some major constraints like lack of investment or absence of cost-reflective tariff hindering the growth of the energy sector.
Dr Ijaz, who a decade back had strongly advocated exporting Bangladesh's gas saying that the country had surplus unutilised gas, yesterday said the gas is depleting fast due to excessive dependency on the resource. The country's energy solution lies on utilising the untapped coal resources, he added.
Dr Shuddhasattwa on the other hand said the country's true potential lies in utilising renewable energy. He said even though installation cost of renewable energy is high, its operating cost is low and it is environmentally clean.