Context
Only 53 per cent of Bangladesh’s 160 million people have a connection to the electricity grid. The grid itself is characterised by an unreliable power supply. Only 43 per cent of those living in rural areas, which are home to over 70 per cent of the population, have electricity. Of the entire population, just ten per cent have access to natural gas. These are primarily residents of the country’s few urban agglomerations. The rest of the population depend on biomass fuel, especially wood, biomass briquettes, cow dung and agricultural residues collected from the local area. Biomass accounts for 68 per cent of the primary energy supply, with over 90 per cent of households using fuel-wood for cooking.
The most recent Household Income and Expenditure Survey in 2010 revealed that about 32 per cent of the country’s population is ‘poor,’ when measured against the national poverty line. In the same year, according to the World Bank, 76 per cent of the population existed on an income of less than two dollars a day. Due to the low level of economic development, many households cannot afford modern energy services, depending instead on inefficient and polluting kerosene lamps, environmentally harmful dry-cell batteries for radios, and overpriced cell-phone charging services. Smoke and soot from the kerosene lamps and conventional stoves cause eye problems and respiratory diseases. Meanwhile, medium-sized and larger factories also face the daily challenge of securing a back-up electricity supply during power failures. Smaller enterprises and micro-businesses cease operations at dusk.
The development of sustainable, decentralised energy services with the use of renewable resources to provide reliable and efficient supply is key to reducing poverty, improving public health and protecting the natural environment.
Objective
A range of decentralised, renewable energy sources are available to households and industries, and the supply of energy is used more efficiently. Increasingly, poor families are able to replace their unhealthy traditional stoves and kerosene lamps, and to avoid drinking unsafe water.
Approach
The ‘Renewable energy and energy efficiency programme’ was commissioned by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). It takes a multilevel approach and cooperates with a large number of different partners.
At the policy level the most important partner is the Ministry of Power, Energy and Mineral Resources. GIZ is advising the Ministry on ways to improve the legal and institutional framework for the energy sector. This includes developing energy policies and stipulating rules and regulations for energy conservation. The programme has supported the newly established Sustainable and Renewable Energy Development Authority (SREDA) from its inception.
For the development and adaptation of relevant technologies, the programme cooperates with research and educational institutions and government programmes. It is also collaborating with the Bangladesh Standards and Testing Institution to develop new standards for energy efficient appliances.
GIZ is working with state institutions to encourage the dissemination and adaptation of new technologies. These institutions include Infrastructure Development Company Limited (IDCOL), as well as numerous local non-governmental organisations and small and medium-sized enterprises. At the same time, the programme is raising awareness on the part of financial institutions about the need to provide suitable financial mechanisms to support renewable energies and energy efficiency measures.
The programme cooperates with other organisations including the UK Department for International Development (DFID), the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves (GACC), International Finance Corporation (IFC), KfW development bank and the World Bank.
Results
In 2003, IDCOL launched a solar home systems programme, which had installed more than three million systems by 2014. Around 420,000 of these involved GIZ support in the period since 2006. This is regarded as one of the most successful programmes of its kind in the world, and it has brought many benefits.
• Income generation from commercial and handicraft activities has increased, with workshops and businesses able to remain open after dark.
• Community health centres can refrigerate vaccines and other medicines for storage.
• Children are now able to do their schoolwork in the evenings.
• People in rural areas use mobile phones to track the market prices for their products and to keep in touch with relatives in the cities or abroad.
GIZ has supported the installation of about 1,500 biogas plants in slaughterhouses, and on dairy and poultry farms. These now produce biogas on a commercial scale, which is used for cooking and generating electricity. By December 2013, about five gigawatts of power was being generated with biogas digesters. The use of biogas reduces the consumption of biomass traditionally used for cooking. A by-product of the production process is pathogen-free fertiliser, which helps prevent the spread of diseases. Around 100 institutions, including boarding schools and madrasas (religious schools), now use human sewage to generate biogas.
In close cooperation with the Bangladesh Ministry of Environment and Forests, GIZ has introduced and supported a skills-building programme for the construction of stoves for 5,800 shop owners, more than 1,200 women volunteers and 500 promoters encourage the wider uptake of the energy-efficient, improved stoves. This extensive network has so far resulted in the installation of over 1.58 million stoves. Depending on their construction, usage patterns and fuel quality, energy-efficient stoves use 30–50 per cent less fuel than traditional stoves. They are equipped with a chimney that significantly reduces the health risks to users – mostly women and small children. More and more people are interested in getting involved in the Bangladeshi market for cooking stoves.
An improved system for parboiling rice in the husk has been successfully piloted in rice mills. Optimising an older system, the consumption of rice husks was reduced by more than 50 per cent. So far, 65 mill owners have introduced this system.
In 2010, partly in cooperation with the Comprehensive Disaster Management Programme of the Bangladesh Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief, the project began installing solar powered pumps to supply drinking water in areas prone to arsenic contamination and salinity. There are now 106 such pumps providing clean drinking water to households in the south-west of the country. To date, facilities have been installed to pump and purify up to 1.9 million litres of drinking water every day. The construction of additional systems started in 2014. GIZ aims to blend community management and private sector involvement to ensure the systems are managed sustainably.
The advisory services to the Ministry have helped improve the legal and institutional framework of the energy sector. As a result, not only are renewable energy technologies becoming more widespread, but the level of energy efficiency is increasing in industries and households.