Jehangir Hussain :
As Bangladesh is the seventh most at-risk country on the planet to be impacted by climate change, experts asked it to strengthen its renewable energy programmes to replace its dependence on fossil fuels to achieve decarbonisation by 2050.
They say that Bangladesh has no choice but to be compatible with 1.5°C pathway. With 80 per cent area of the country being low-lying and vulnerable to flooding it is increasingly experiencing extreme weather events. In 2020, at least 25 per cent area of Bangladesh was submerged by flood waters. Bangladesh’s densely populated coastal belt is more vulnerable to climate change effects with the people there remaining exposed to rising sea levels, floods, erosion, cyclones, storm surge, saline water intrusion and other vagaries of nature.
As the planet would face massive challenge to tackle emissions over the next decade to keep global warming within 1.5°C, as the Paris Agreement requires to avoid the possible climate risk, countries like Bangladesh would need international support to decarbonise their economies.
Bangladesh’ has a lot to do to reduce its traditional dependence on fossil fuels to zero by 2040 to save itself from global warming. Before corona hit it, Bangladesh was planning to build 29 new coal-fired power stations, but the economic impact of the pandemic together with rising costs of imported coal and lower energy demand; it scrapped many of those plans.
As the capacity expansion is taking place using natural gas, Bangladesh plans to increase import of liquefied natural gas (LNG) in 2021. But the prescribed 1.5°C regime would require abandoning the LNG dependent system before it reaches the full life cycle.
For a Paris-Treaty friendly future, Bangladesh needs to scrap the gas plans and take to wind-down procedures. Bangladesh is pledge-bound, under the Paris Agreement, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 69 per cent in phases by 2030.
Its agriculture sector, where the main component of gas is methane, contributes around 28 per cent of the total emissions in Bangladesh. This potent greenhouse gas is more harmful than carbon dioxide as it warms up the atmosphere pretty quickly.
Therefore, the policy-makers need to pay greater attention to the country’s agriculture sector. Recently methane emissions from landfills in Bangladesh also drew attention of experts. As Bangladesh needs to protect its people from the worst effects of climate change, it needs to reduce emissions in phases by 2030, with international support.
By 2050, Bangladesh would need to reduce the emission by 74 per cent. A 1.5°C regime would require abandoning many fossil fuel-powered plants well before they reach their full life cycle.
Bangladesh needs to reduce, in phases, its dependence on fossil fuels by 80 per cent by 2050. In other words, experts say, Bangladesh needs to gradually reduce its dependence on natural gas, coal and oil, mostly used by transports. Only future can say, how far it would be possible.
Renewable energy is gradually getting popular in Bangladesh. And the government has recently set the target of generating 40 per cent of power using renewable energy by 2041, up from three per ce4nt now. Already, Bangladesh has the world’s one of the largest off-grid solar power programmes.
Decentralised and climate-resilient power system, using mini and micro-grids, would be able to reduce the negative impacts of extreme weather events on the country’s energy infrastructure. Bangladesh would be able to achieve it by strengthening its renewable energy use by replacing fossil system in phases.
The phasing out of fossil fuel subsidies and the solar system is cheaper than the coal-fired plants. This would also facilitate decarbonisation of the power sector.
Bangladesh chairs the ‘Climate Vulnerable Forum’ (CVF), the global group for the most climate change-threatened countries, backing the 1.5°C regime. These countries need stronger climate action and increased international financial support to decarbonise their economies.
(Jehangir Hussain is a senior journalist. Email: [email protected]).
