Sustainability challenges and solution pathways for the energy sector in Bangladesh : implications for development | |
| Author | Mahmud, Hasan |
| Call Number | AIT Diss. no.ET-21-02 |
| Subject(s) | Renewable energy sources--Bangladesh Energy industries--Bangladesh Power resources--Bangladesh |
| Note | A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Engineering in Energy |
| Publisher | Asian Institute of Technology |
| Abstract | Bangladesh is one of the fastest growing economies in South Asia, with Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growing ~ at 7.86 percent in 2018 and at ~ 8.2 percent in 2019. The country's aim is to achieve developed nation status by 2041. The country has ratified Paris agreement and committed to achieve SDG targets as set mentioned in 2015. Based on extensive literature review and identification of research gaps, this study broadly aims to contribute in refinement of the indicator-based tool to assess sustainability of energy sector for a fast- growing economy like Bangladesh, to identify the barriers that need to be overcome on the way towards energy sector sustainability and finally to develop possible future solution pathways for sustainable development of energy sector to be compatible with future national goals in keeping with the commitments of the country as it grows within global sustainability objective. The thesis aims to answer three research questions: (1) How to assess sustainability of energy sector for a fast-growing economy like Bangladesh? (2) What are the barriers for achieving sustainable development of energy sector for Bangladesh? How can the barriers be prioritized to overcome them? (3) What are the possible future pathways for energy sector to be compatible with future national growth scenarios as mentioned in Bangladesh delta plan 2100 and in the Vision 2041 document of Bangladesh and sustainable development goals targets of Bangladesh for SDGs especially 7.2 and 7.3? Going forward to achieve 2030, 2040 and 2050 national goals compatible with global sustainability goals what are the possible pathways? The specific objectives of the study are as follows: first, to develop an indicator-based tool to assess sustainability of energy sector for a fast-growing economy like Bangladesh. Second, to identify the barriers and barrier hierarchy to understand in what order they can be overcome on the way towards sustainability of energy sector. Third, to work out some possible future pathways for sustainable development of energy sector to be compatible with future national growth scenarios keeping the commitments of the country as it grows within global sustainability goals. Countries can be classified based on their historical growth rate as fast growing, moderately growing, stagnant and negatively growing countries. In this study, we define an economy as fast growing which undergoes on an average 7-10 % GDP growth rate annually. So, we try to understand what has been the energy sector’s growth and pattern in four Asian predecessors China, Singapore, South Korea & Malaysia to compare if in sustainability challenges of the energy sector Bangladesh can replicate any lesson. First, for evaluation and clear understanding of the sustainability challenges of energy sector development in Bangladesh, in this study, an indicator based multidimensional hierarchical framework for sustainability assessment has been adopted. We select a long list of all possible indicators to create an indicator library for assessing sustainable development of energy sector based on literature survey. This allowed us to select in the second stage using certain criteria and based on data availability a context specific shorter list of 38 indicators for Bangladesh energy sector under three major dimensions of sustainability: environmental, social and economic. Among these selected 38 indicators for Bangladesh 10 are in environmental dimensions, social dimension contains 8 and 24 are in economic dimension. Then we compared the Bangladesh energy sector sustainability indices with benchmark values. Benchmark sustainable energy system, with which Bangladesh energy sector indicators are compared, is created using the best indicator values observed across different national energy systems in the world within the time period 1991-2017. This provide the information to examine environmental, social and economic implications and gaps within the existing energy system which has grown over 27 years in Bangladesh. These helped us to identify what should be the future targets for interventions towards sustainable energy sector development in the country. Finally, a composite sustainability index method is used to assess the overall sustainability status of the energy sector. We develop a composite sustainability index for assessing sustainability status. To get overall sustainability index, we need the weight for each dimension of composite sustainability index. To avoid subjectivity we followed an objective method by running a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) over the large data set gathered from various secondary sources, after statistically checking for its applicability in the context of the data set, for calculating the weights. This provide the Bangladesh energy sector sustainability index and contribution of various dimensional indices. The overall index value is increased from 0.514 to 0.538 during 1991-2017. This finding lead to the conclusion that energy sector of Bangladesh is slowly becoming sustainable over time. The highest contribution to this rise is coming from social dimensions and marginally from economic dimensions. However, a deeper look shows that socio-economic development over this long period of 27 gave priority to social and economic dimensions like any other country in the world during their fast-growing phase more but eventually ignored environmental indicators and which shows up in downward trend in environmental dimension. This negative trend in the environmental dimension is pulling down the overall national energy sector sustainability index. If relatively higher indicator value ~0.75 for environmental dimension in the initial years for Bangladesh which was closer to benchmark value of 1 than the unsustainable index value of zero, could have been maintained along with growth in social and economic indicators national energy sector sustainability index could have been much higher than what it is recorded as 0.54. So, how faster socio-economic growth and wellbeing can be delivered within the limits of environmental sustainability which determines over all human wellbeing needs to get high or at least equal priority with social and economic dimensions in the future sustainable energy sector development of Bangladesh. Moreover, looking at the weights at the indicator level it can be concluded that three most important areas which need attention to reduce the sustainability gap are faster penetration of renewable energy, provisioning of faster access to modern energy in the form of electricity and enhancement of energy efficiency across all economic sectors in Bangladesh. Based on this conclusion, for the second objective of the study, the analysis identifies the barriers in faster achievements within these three focus areas individually and also to identify hierarchy of barriers if there are any in each of them to understand better how they can be overcome through interventions. To analyze barriers to attaining sustainable energy sector for Bangladesh, through extensive survey of literature subsequently validated by the stakeholder feedback 13 barriers in renewable energy penetration, 14 barriers in energy access and nine barriers in energy efficiency focus area were identified. They all could be categorized in the broad eight different dimensions: economic and financial barrier, technical barrier, institutional barrier, informational barrier, human capacity barrier, policy and governance barrier, resources and environment barrier, geopolitical barrier. Interpretive Structural Model has been used (ISM) along with MICMAC (cross-impact matrix multiplication applied to classification) for barrier hierarchy analysis. The findings show that for each of them the barrier hierarchy varies. Historical practice of top-down process in policy and governance is creating a major barrier in renewable energy penetration. Lack of adequately trained human capital is slowing down both the renewable energy penetration and energy efficiency improvements across sectors. Shortage of professionally trained manpower with right skill to assess resource potential, in industry and financial sector to conduct energy audit and management, lead and manage innovation, guide technology development and deployment, enterprise development for local manufacturing, can be overcome through introduction of extensive teaching and training programmes and by creating a network of national institutions. Collaboration with international institutes will accelerate the process of training of national trainers and new skilled manpower and simultaneously satisfy multiple SDGs. Information barrier is prominent in case of progress in 24x7 access to electricity/modern energy. Informational limitation is a significant barrier to ensure access to reliable clean power at affordable cost. There is lack of data on resource potential and site-specific ground data for solar radiation, wind speed, well-developed wind map. Lack of demand side data like cultural characteristics, specific service wise demand, acceptability of new technologies and diffusion potential, satisfaction survey on renewable energy use, limited knowledge of consumer on operation of new technologies, maintenance, battery handling, absence of centralized information create barrier for targeted actions. Besides, the other barriers like battery backup to overcome intermittency, improper battery disposal, limited non-crop land area worsen the situation. As there is no comprehensive database many a times decisions on providing access to energy get influenced subjectively by the local leaders of various political constituencies. By making room for new institutional arrangements and the strategic role of local experts, stakeholders such as manufacturers, businesses, and users can create a sociopolitical environment that makes it possible to break the current inter-linked chain of barriers. Simultaneous supplementary efforts towards human capacity building, the creation of a database for both the demand and supply sides of renewable energy, and improvement in coordination across institutions could be helpful. Future solution pathways for sustainable energy sector development for Bangladesh has been developed following Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index (LMDI)-based scenario generation technique. One Reference Scenario (RS) and four other scenarios: Improved Energy Efficiency Scenario (IEES), Improved Energy Access Scenario (IEAS), Improved Renewable Energy penetration Scenario (IRES), Low Carbon Transformation Scenario (LCTS) - are created for the period 2019 to 2050. Each scenario is quantified and compared by estimating the amount of energy supply, the level of emissions, and the amount of investment required. The results show in comparison to the RS, in LCTS, where the emission, energy supply, and required investment are about half of those in RS, can provide same desired economic growth rates mentioned in various national official documents but can be consistent with global goal for high clean energy penetration and high energy efficiency levels in each sector consistent with SDGs and enhanced over all electrification. IEAS scenario shows Bangladesh can provide decent living standards for all in 2050 despite absolute growth in population with improved energy efficiency requiring only ~3.0 times more energy compared to 2018 level. Fossil fuel does not get eliminated in any of the scenarios by 2050 but coal does in LCTS scenario and provides an opportunity to look for enhancing the clan energy portfolio to replace remaining fossil fuel by searching through new emerging cleaner fuels. These results can enrich future development of Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) of Bangladesh. Both LCTS scenarios and IEAS scenarios provide plausible long-term futures for Bangladesh where national growth objectives, decent living standards for all are achievable through technology choice from a diversified cleaner fuels portfolio, efficient energy resource use to reduce wastes in energy resource hence reducing need for investment in energy supply expansion and can help eliminate coal from fossil fuel portfolio which is also consistent with global sustainability and climate goal. Indicator analysis derives the conclusions on what needs to be done differently than in the past while growing fast through this decade in next two decades in socio-economic dimensions and what immediate actions and interventions need to be considered in three broad dimensions of sustainability by resolving barriers through appropriate prioritization in order to act faster to overcome multiple barriers. So, these are relevant for actions now but also to ensure long term sustainability of the energy sector of Bangladesh. The present study provides objective method, evidence based policy relevant insights which has not so far been attempted in the literature to enhance sustainability status by reducing gaps, barriers and their interlinkage in the hierarchical framework, and solution pathways for ensuring sustainable energy sector development in Bangladesh while satisfying alternative developmental scenarios both in near term 2021-2030 and longer term of 2040 and 2050. The present study also identifies limitation and scopes for advancing this current research in future in advancing the applied methodologies, data base enrichment and to ensure disaster resilience of the energy sector development in broader sustainability framework. |
| Year | 2021 |
| Type | Dissertation |
| School | School of Environment, Resources, and Development (SERD) |
| Department | Department of Energy and Climate Change (Former title: Department of Energy, Environment, and Climate Change (DEECC)) |
| Academic Program/FoS | Energy Technology (ET) |
| Chairperson(s) | Roy, Joyashree |
| Examination Committee(s) | Dhakal, Shobhakar;Pal, Indrajit |
| Scholarship Donor(s) | Bangladesh Embassy Bangabandhu Chair Fund |
| Degree | Thesis (Ph.D.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 2021 |