8th Five-Year Plan should focus on rational power distribution: Experts

The power sector of Bangladesh is increasingly facing challenges with regard to inefficiency, cost escalation, lack of cleaner energy-mix, poor quality of transmission and distribution and rising financial burden, say energy experts.

Those challenges are likely to aggravate in the future and hence it is important to take lessons from that to ensure proper implementation of the 8th Five-Year Plan (8th FYP), they said.

They made the observations at a virtual event titled “Reflections of the Power Sector in the Upcoming 8th Five-Year Plan: Perspectives on Strategies and Initiatives”, organised by the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) on Thursday.

Improvement of transmission and distribution of electricity should be a major focus of the power sector during the 8th FYP period. Focus should also be given on strengthening the capacity of implementing renewable energy projects, and both traditional and non-traditional renewable energy projects should get priority in the upcoming policy document, according to a CPD statement.

“To move to renewable energy, relying only on solar energy would not be enough. More studies need to be conducted regarding opportunities of producing wind energy in Bangladesh,” said Mohammad Alauddin, the chairman at Sustainable and Renewable Energy Development Authority.

Power Cell Director General Mohammad Hossain said the high reserve margin of generation is due to the low demand of power in the COVID-19 scenario. He said that the government is taking due measures in addressing rising cost, inefficiency and higher financial burden on the power sector.

CPD’s Distinguished Fellow Professor Mustafizur Rahman emphasised that the power and energy sector has now moved into the second generation of problems where challenges have moved from concerns from generation of electricity to pricing and energy mix issues. He ended the Dialogue with a vote of thanks.

Among others, former special assistant to the Chief Advisor Professor M Tamim, Department of Chemical Engineering at BUET Professor Ijaz Hossain, CPD’s Executive Director Fahmida Khatun also spoke at the event.