President Abdul Hamid thursday urged people to be rational in using natural gas and electricity and sought promotion of environment friendly renewable energy to ensure energy security for the future.
“We must come out from the mentality of the indiscriminate use of electricity . . . we’ve to be rational in the use of electricity,” he said while launching National Power & Energy Week-2015′ marked by an ‘Power & Energy Fair.
Side by side, he said, steps must be taken to increase renewable energy and cut system losses “for ensuring energy security for the future generation”.
Finance minister AMA Muhith and Prime Minister’s energy affairs adviser Dr Tawfiq-e-Elahi Chowdhury also spoke at the inaugural ceremony of the week chaired by state minister for power, energy and mineral resources Nasrul Hamid at Bangabandhu International Conference Centre (BICC).
The president called electricity an integral element for development and said “power and development go hand in hand and electricity is essential for all socio-economic sectors like industries, agriculture, medical systems and communication.
He said the country needed undisrupted power supplies also for rural industries to achieve the government plans to turn Bangladesh into a middle income country by 2021.
The President calculated the country’s power demand to stand at 24,000 megawatt (mw) by 2021 and 39,000mw by 2030 and asked the authorities concerned to augment electricity generation keeping the figures in mind.
He said development of transmission and distribution systems was equally important to reach power to the door-step of the people.
Bangladesh’s current power generation capacity now stands at 11,877mw while 3, 41,000-km power distribution lines reach the power to 74 percent of the population.
The president noted that the implementation of a government master plan was now underway to reach the electricity to the rest of the population by constructing 200,000-km more distribution line.
The president, however, appreciated the high government priorities for the power sector as he reviewed the short, medium and long-term programmes for the development of the sector particularly pointing out initiatives of importing power from neighbouring countries including India.
He said natural gas is considered as the main driving force of the country economy as it meets the three-fourths of the country’s present industrial energy need.
The government has already taken various steps to increase the production of natural gas and coal, he said, adding that three new gas fields have been discovered since 2009 and additional 986 MMCFD gas has been added to the national grid.
He said increasing the use of renewable energy to meet the increasing demand of power is important because renewable energy is environment friendly and sustainable.
After inaugurating the electricity fair by cutting ribbon, President Hamid went round different stalls at the fair venue where the state-run and independent power producers and enterprises related to electricity generation were taking part.