BPDB wants clear-cut policy on coal-fired power plants

Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) has urged the Power Division to give them a very clear-cut policy on coal-fired power project issues so that it can take future course of action in proper manner.
Currently, there are 29 coal-fired power plants in BPDB's pipeline at varying stages of development. However, the government has recently declared that they scrapped 10 projects.
"We need a very clear-cut policy direction from the high-ups to deal with the coal-fired pipeline projects as the government is planning to cut power production from coal sources, BPDB Chairman Engineer Belayet Hossain said.
He said this at the policy discussion meeting on proposed power-energy sector master plan. He, however, said they were yet to receive such a direction from the high-ups.
The scrapped projects include a 522MW plant in Munshiganj, a 282MW plant in Dhaka, 282MW in Chattogram, 1,320MW in Moheskhali, 1,320MW in Ashuganj, 1,200MW in Gaibandha, a 700MW Singapore-Bangladesh joint-venture, a 1,200MW CPGCL- Sumitomo Corporation joint-venture and a 1,320MW Bangladesh-Malaysia joint-venture.
The 10 discarded projects are among the 18 planned coal-fired power
plants that were approved after 2008.
"Now we are planning to use liquefied natural gas LNG and petroleum to generate power. But we are yet to make a plan on how a LNG-fired power plant can be set up," State Minister for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Nasrul Hamid said.
 "We are keeping the three coal-fired power plants that are under construction. At present, we are aiming for 40 to 41GW of total generation capacity, where only 5GW is coal based," he also said.
Bangladesh has one of the largest coal-fired power pipelines in the world, a total of 29 power plants amounting to 33.2GW of capacity, according to a 2019 study by an Australian organization that tracks fossil fuel investment.
It will dramatically swing the nation's power development away from coal, said Simon Nicholas, energy finance analyst with the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA).
In addition, Bangladesh's Power Development Board must also pay costly subsidies to operators of underutilized power plants in the form of 'capacity payments'.
With a coal power utilization rate of just 43% from 2018-19 the government reportedly burned US$1.1 billion in payments to power plant operators.
One third of the Energy Ministry's budget has been allocated for capacity payments for idle power plants in the 2020-2021 financial years, it said.
The 29 coal power plants currently in Bangladesh's pipeline are at varying stages of development. The three that Minister Hamid suggested will continue as planned are  - Rampal, Matarbari and Payra,
Those three have entered the construction phase and are nearing completion. Their financiers include Chinese, Japanese and Indian export credit and international cooperation agencies.
Other projects have signed engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) deals, equity investment deals or are only at the stage of memoranda of understanding.
 "These plants among the 26 the government last year announced would be reviewed because of environmental concerns and a widening gap between overall power generation capacity and demand," a Power Division official said.
The Ministry of Power, Energy and Mineral Resources proposed scrapping the projects as the construction work had made no progress over the years.
According to the state-run Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB), the installed capacity of the country's total electricity generation stands at 22,023MW (excluding captive power).
Currently, there are 149 power plants. Of them, 71 plants are run either by heavy fuel oil (HFO) or high-speed diesel (HSD), 67 by gas, seven by solar power, and three by coal. Just one of the plants generates hydropower.
Seven of the plants have already gone into retirement as shown in BPDB data.
Of it, the government runs 57 of the plants, while just one is a joint venture. The highest number of plants, 71, belongs to the independent power producers (IPP).