BANGLADESH comes fourth in the list of countries with highest coal-power capacity in pre-construction status, already announced or in planning stages, with 10.9 gigawatt — as the San Francisco-based non-governmental organisation Global Energy Monitor, which assesses fossil fuel and renewable energy projects in the world, in a report released on April 26 says — behind Vietnam, India and China. Although Bangladesh is reported have abandoned many coal-power plants, with 10.8GW having been done away with in 2021, it has not been keeping to what the government initially announced in 2020. Bangladesh in 2021 began the construction of coal-fired power plants of a combined capacity of 2.6GW, which increased the number of construction of such plants from four to six aimed at a total general of 6.7GW. Once the plants go into operation, Bangladesh would have its coal-power capacity four times the 1.8GW that it now has. Such a situation adds to the debt burden of Bangladesh by way of unused power overcapacity, estimated to be $1 billion a year, as of 2021, that the government pays for stranded power capacity under guaranteed power purchase agreements. A combination of high coal power prices and the guaranteed power purchase agreements, as the Global Energy Monitor says, put consumers in Bangladesh and the country’s Power Development Board in a tough situation.
While Bangladesh has already officially announced more than a half of its 10.9GW coal-power capacity in pre-construction status, Vietnam comes third with 20GW, India second with 23.9GW and China with 158GW, all adding up the total of 280GW of capacity in pre-construction status in the world. When more than 40 countries have already agreed to phase out their use of coal-fired power, considered the dirtiest fuel source, Bangladesh’s planning on further power from coal and entering construction of coal-fired power plants is unacceptable. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the International Energy Agency say that bigger economies must phase out their use of coal-fired power capacity in the 2030s and small economies must do so in the 2040s to keep the world liveable. The promise of coal being easy and cheap turns out not to be true and Bangladesh’s dependence on coal is feared to be increasingly limiting the development of its economy. In addition, pollution from coal-fired power plants in the densely-populated Bangladesh could, as Bangladesh Paribesh Andolan which demands an end to the use of coal for power generation says, invite a humanitarian catastrophe. The world now has more than 2,400 coal-fired power plants running in 79 countries for about 2,100GW, with an additional 176GW of coal-power capacity under way at more than 189 plants and 280GW planned at 296 plants.
Bangladesh must, in such a situation, reduce its dependence on the use of coal-fired power to reduce the growing debt burden and its impact on people. The government must retire more coal-fired plants also in its efforts to stop emissions that pollute the environment. Bangladesh must also start depending more on renewable energy, which is cheap, at least cheaper than power from coal, in national interests and for the world to stay within 1.5C.