Despite adopting various initiatives to generate electricity from renewable energy sources, Bangladesh generated only 0.72 per cent of electricity from wind and solar sources in 2021, said an analysis from Ember, a climate and energy think tank.
Meanwhile, global electricity generation from solar and wind hiked up in 2021 and it stood at 10 per cent of world electricity.
In its third annual global electricity review released on Wednesday, EMBER said that in 2021, a record 38 per cent of the global electricity was generated from all clean sources.
Out of the electricity generated solely through solar and wind sources, more than 98 per cent of clean energy was produced from solar energy in 2021, as per the data set on Bangladesh in the Global Electricity Review 2021 by EMBER.
Wind and solar sources contributed to 0.59 TeraWatt per Hour (TWh) of the total electricity generation in Bangladesh in 2021, which represents a 0.72 per cent share of the total electricity generation in the country.
According to the Renewable Energy Policy 2008, Bangladesh had plans to generate 5 per cent of the country's total electricity generation from renewable sources by 2015.
Later, in the Power System Master Plan 2016, the target was to generate 10 per cent of the output from the renewable sector, mainly solar, by 2020. But that too fell short.
The government now says it will generate 4,100 megawatts of electricity by 2030 from renewable sources. The power department said the initiative was taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Half of this production -- 2,026 MW will come from solar energy. Meanwhile, 1,596 MW of electricity will be generated using water and wind, respectively.
At present, Bangladesh has the capacity to generate about 25,000 MW of electricity from 146 power plants and other sources. Of this, only 7 MW is being generated from renewable sources, which is about 3 per cent of the total capacity.
“Wind and solar have arrived. The process that will reshape the existing energy system has begun. This decade they need to be deployed at lightning speed to reverse global emissions increases and tackle climate change,” said Dave Jones, the global lead of EMBER.
EMBER revealed that 50 countries generated more than a tenth of their electricity from wind and solar in 2021, including all five of the world’s largest economies.
Seven new countries passed the landmark for the first time in 2021. They are -- China, Japan, Mongolia, Viet Nam, Argentina, Hungary, and El Salvador.
Across the world, the share of electricity generated from wind and solar has doubled since 2015 when the Paris Agreement was signed.
The report highlighted that Bangladesh emitted around 45.44 Mt CO2 in 2021 with an emission intensity of 559.606g CO2 per kWh. It represents around 0.28t CO2 per capita emission this year. It almost doubled from the emission in 2010.
