UNB, Dhaka :
The government is going to replace 50,000 inefficient boilers in rice mills across the country under the Bangladesh Bank’s loan refinancing scheme for ‘green energies’.
According to official sources, the Power Division, German donor agency GIZ, and some commercial banks have teamed up with the central bank to plan, implement and execute the project.
The Power Division took responsibility for designing the plan, officially the ‘Efficient Rice Husk Parboiling Programme’, under its action plan for conserving as well as making more efficient use of energy.
Once implemented, the project will not only increase the overall efficiency of rice mills by replacing inefficient boilers with new, efficient ones; it will also save significant amount of rice husk that is now being used in heating water for processing rice.
Official sources said, under the project, the mill-owners will get to avail loans from the banking system at favourable interest rates below 10 percent – against the average rate of 17-18 percent – for replacing their old and inefficient boilers with new ones.
In order to allow the banking system to support such favourable terms for its customers, Bangladesh Bank will disburse funds from its so-called ‘green energy fund’ to commercial banks at interest rates between 4-6 percent. It’s understood that an effective monitoring mechanism will be put in place by the central bank to ensure that these cheap funds aren’t used by private banks to finance any other kind of activity.
The total amount to be released by the central bank in support of the scheme is still not clear though. What is known is that the government has been the recipient of an enormous inflow of such ‘green funds’ – so called to distinguish money spent by donors to fight climate change, through the network of international agencies.
In order to encourage the growth of ‘green investment’, the central bank reportedly had already introduced a refinance line of Tk 2 billion at an interest rate of 5 percent by May 2014. The boiler replacement programme will continue till 2021.
Additional secretary at the Power Division Tapos Kumar Roy informed reporters that all the stakeholders – including officials of Power Division, Bangladesh Bank, commercial banks, the concerned donor agency, rice millers, and boiler sellers – had already held a number of joint meetings to move ahead with the project.
Mr. Roy, who has been dealing with energy efficiency and renewable energy-related issues at the Power Division over the last few years, said a team comprising stakeholders will soon be starting field-level work to promote the project.
“During our field visits, initially in Iswardi and Bogra, we’ll be holding discussions with rice millers and address whatever issues necessary to get them involved in the project, before providing the loans to replace inefficient boilers.
“The main objective of the visiting phase would be to avoid any bureaucratic tangles that may come up for rice millers looking to avail loans for replacing boilers,” Roy told UNB.
He claimed that through the replacement of old boilers by new ones, energy savings of around 50 percent could be made by the mills, as well as use of 50 percent of the rice husk, and reduce the cost of rice processing as well.
The rice husk savings could then be used for other purposes – even power production in other projects, he said.
Roy backed up his claims with reference to a recent study jointly conducted by the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute, the Energy Audit Cell of the Power and Energy Ministry, and Modern Erection Ltd.
Sustainable Energy Development (SED) engineers at GIZ – the technical support arm of the German government’s international development agency, worked to optimize the geometry of the boiler, furnace, and chimney for efficient combustion and heat transfer.
This research group constructed the new type of boiler and found that it could reduce the use of rice husks by ‘over 50 percent’.
Tapos Roy also revealed that the government has allocated a fund of Tk 400 crore in the new budget for the 2014-15 fiscal, for promotion of energy-efficiency and renewable energy. He went on to add that a part of this fund could be put to use for the boiler replacement programme.
