Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Wednesday said the target has been set to bring three million more families under renewable solar energy system through Infrastructure Development Company Limited (IDCOL) in the next three years.
The PM was inaugurating programme organised at a city hotel to celebrate a landmark three million solar home systems installed in the country. Hasina said there are huge potentials of solar-based irrigation pumps in the country. At present, the number of diesel-run irrigation pumps in the country is 14 lakh. “For these, we’ve to import a huge quantity of diesel spending our valuable foreign exchange.”
Besides, she said, to run the 150,000 electricity-run irrigation pumps the power grid has to bear an immense pressure. “If a portion of these pumps can be put under the solar-based irrigation system, the import of diesel will decrease significantly and the pressure on the national grid will ease.”
Since its inception, IDCOL is playing a major role in bridging the financing gap for developing a medium to large-scale infrastructure and renewable energy projects in Bangladesh. The company now stands as the market leader in private sector energy and infrastructure financing in Bangladesh.
IDCOL is managed by an eight-member independent Board of Directors comprising four senior government officials, three representatives from the private sector, and a full-time Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer. It has a small and multi-skilled work force comprising financial and market analysts, engineers, lawyers, IT experts, accountants and environmental and social safeguard specialists.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina underscored the need for transforming the country’s existing carbon-based energy system into a smart, clean and effective energy one suiting the 21st century to ensure sustainable economic development.
She said to achieve this target taking public and private initiative, environmental planning and technological roadmap as well as global cooperation in large extent is needed. Hasina said IDCOL’s Solar Home System is one of the largest and fastest growing off-grid renewable energy programmes in the world.
The primary objective is to supply clean electricity in the energy-starved off-grid rural areas of Bangladesh and hence, the supplement the government’s vision of ensuring access to electricity for all by 2021.
Now people can buy a of 20-watt solar home system to run three bulbs and mobile chargers at Tk 12,000 only.
Against the backdrop of huge power shortage, the present government has taken emergency, short, medium and long-term plans to revitalise the ill-fated power sector soon after assuming of office in 2009. As a result, the capacity of electricity generation has now risen to 11,418 mw, she said.
Apart from importing 500-MW electricity from India, the government has signed a deal with Russia to set up Nuclear Power Plant which would add 1000 MW of more electricity to the national grid by 2018 and another 1000 MW by 2020, Hasina said. – GreenWatch Dhaka Desk
