A review of current renewable energy activities in Bangladesh

Abstract

This paper reviews the prospects of available renewable energy resources along with various private and government future project plans to incorporate renewable energy sources and its potentials in perspective of Bangladesh. In an arising country like Bangladesh demand for energy will be burgeoning. Present day, in Bangladesh dearth of energy is ubiquitous and near about 70% of its population is excluded from access to electricity and bulk of the people are living in rural areas. Among several renewable energy resources, the application of solar Photo Voltaic (PV) is renowned although the largest plant based on renewable energy goes into hydroelectricity. Additionally, wind, biogas, mini hydro and tidal are also well known. A plan has been initiated by the Government of Bangladesh (GOB) to generate 5% of the total energy from renewable energy resources within 2015 and 20% by the year of 2020. Through the approved renewable energy policy, the GOB is devoted to facilitate investment in both public and private sectors in renewable energy projects to substitute contemporaneous non-renewable energy resources and escalate the contributions of renewable energy based electricity generation. With this context, review of recent activities on concurrent renewable energy resources is imperative as well as to explore potentials of the resources. However, not all renewable energy sources are suitable to install indiscriminately in all regions, rather there are certain parameters to choose a source of RER for efficacy. After reading this paper, an investor will get significant information about current scenario and steering for future involvement of renewable energy sources in Bangladesh. Furthermore, this paper will be instrumental to select optimum efficacious renewable energy sources for a particular region.