The government has undertaken a big move to set up a 800 MW combined cycle power plant on the abandoned land of Khulna Newsprint Mills Limited to meet the growing demand of power in the country.
“The government has undertaken a series of projects to increase the country’s power generation capacity as we have targeted to generate 24,000 MW electricity by 2021,” State Minister for Power, energy and Mineral Resources Nasrul Hamid told BSS here on Sunday.
He said the proposed power plant would help reduce system loss of electricity as consumers would get more reliable power from their nearby source.
An official said the commission has already reviewed a draft project of the Power Division titled ‘Construction of Roopsa 800 MW combined cycle power plant’ and it is likely to be placed before the ECNEC meeting on Tuesday.
He said the North West Power Generation Company Limited (NWPGCL) under the Power Division has been assigned to implement the project by June 2022 at an estimated cost of Taka 8,498.64 crore.
Out of the total project cost, the official said, the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) and Japan Fund for Poverty Reduction (JFPR) are expected to provide Taka 5,987.87 crore as project assistance, Taka 50 crore will come from the organization’s own fund while the rest Taka 2,460.77 crore would be given by the government.
The project targets improving energy security in Bangladesh. It will increase availability of efficient and cleaner energy by developing a state-of-the-art power plant with 800-megawatt (MW) generation capacity using cleaner and highly efficient power generation technologies.
The Planning Commission official said the project also envisages the construction of associated natural gas supply and power transmission infrastructure facilities, as well as strengthening the institutional capacity and overall business process of the project’s executing agency, North-West Power Generation Company Limited (NWPGCL), to efficiently plan and operate power plants.
He said the power plant will be built on some 50 acres of abandoned land at the Khulna Newsprint Mills where natural gas will be used as the initial energy while HSD as an alternate energy.
