State Minister for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Nasrul Hamid said Bangladesh has promised to reduce 61.9 million tons of carbon by 2030 by producing 10 per cent of its power's demand from renewable energy sources (RES).
"Bangladesh has a high potential to move towards a better and more sustainable country with greener energy without compromising the country's economic efficiency, human dignity, standards of living, and financial development, that's needs huge investment," he said.
He was addressing at the inaugural session of UN initiative of "Renewables for Climate Action: Launch of Empowering Lives and Livelihoods Initiative" at CoP28 summit in Dubai, on Monday.
Dr Ajay Mathur, Environment and Climate Minister of UAE, Mariam Bint Mohammed Almheiri, Environment, Climate and Energy Minister of Island Gudlaugur Thor Tohrdarson, Deputy cabinet Minister of Belgium Dominique Perrin, Energy, Water and Irrigation Minister of Nepal Shakti Hahadur Basnet and Energy and Mineral Resources Minister of Indonesia Arifin Tasrif also spoke on the occasion. Director General of ISA and other global leaders were present.
Hamid made a call to the international community to be united to use solar energy to ensure better, prosperous life of the future generation.
"RES and has taken initiatives to ensure quality energy production and supply to every door by 2020. In implementing this high ambition, the government has set plans to generate 10 per cent, in implementing this high ambition, Bangladesh has adopted fuel diversification program for extending its renewable energy (RE) industry and ensuring the ever-increasing electricity demand," he said.
In 2008, the government formulated the Renewable Energy Policy. Public-private investment is welcomed in promoting the RE ventures to replace the fossil fuel-based energy generation to contribute to power to national grid.
Meanwhile, the government has launched a new project "500 MW Solar Power Mission" and introduced the Mujib Climate Prosperity Plan (MCPP).
"Plan has been taken to generate 40 percent power from clean energy by 2041 and import about 9,000MW under the regional and sub-regional cooperation from neighbouring countries," Hamid said.
Apart from this, visible progress has been made in importing hydropower from Nepal and Bhutan. The government is confident of implementing the power generation plan of 40,000 MW by 2030 and 60,000 MW by 2041, he added.
As part of the government's integrated master plan for power and energy sector, the Integrated Energy and Power Master Plan (IEPMP) are almost at the final stage. The present renewable energy installed capacity rose to 950.72 MW.
The government started the Solar Home System (SHS) programmes to fulfill basic electricity requirement of the off-grid rural people and set plan to install 45, 000 solar irrigation pumps across the country to reduce dependency of diesel, he said.
Up to January 2023, about 6.1 million SHSs have been installed under the programme in remote areas where electrification through gird expansion is challenging and costly.
Thus the programmes have ensured supply of solar electricity to over 20 million people i.e. 12 percent of the country's total population, who previously used kerosene lamps for lighting purpose, he added.
