©Sanzidur Rahman
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Energy, both commercial and non-commercial, serves as the major vehicle for development in Bangladesh as elsewhere in the world. For the past two decades, since the birth of Bangladesh, lopsided development efforts without proper concerns for the environment as well as productivity levels of the resource bases has lead to unprecedented crisis in various sectors of the economy. The energy sector also faces severe crisis in meeting the increasing demands for domestic, industrial, transportation and other uses. In the energy consumption scenario of Bangladesh, non-commercial energy plays a dominant role. The domestic sector alone consumes about 65 percent of the total energy and 92 percent of this energy is provided by biomass fuels. The immense pressure on biomass fuels without proper measure for replenishment has resulted in massive deforestation, decline in soil fertility and/or reduced productivity in lands. Agricultural residues and animal wastes, that are supposed to be utilized for soil fertility management, are used as energy for domestic uses, agro-based industries as well as other uses. About 64 percent of total non-commercial energy come from agricultural residues whose future availability is dependent on the future agricultural development plans. Also, such diversion of agricultural residues for energy use has raised concerns for the policy planners as yields of major crops (e.g., rice, wheat, jute) are showing a declining trend owing to declining soil fertility and disparate access to required rural infrastructure. However, observation of past energy consumption data revealed that the share of non-commercial energy in the total primary energy consumption has been declining steadily allowing for substitution by the commercial energy. The reasons for such phenomenal change can be largely attributed to past and present policy thrusts for developing the commercial energy sector, particularly the natural gas. For example, the sectoral allocation for energy in the Five Year Development Plans increased consistently from only 11 percent in the First Five Year Plan (1973-78) to 21 percent in the Fourth Five Year Plan (1990-95). Also, the supply constraints in rapid growth of biomass energy without proper development measures for replenishment could be another reason for declining share of non-commercial energy
Links to other sites on the Web
Natural Resources Planning and Management
Organization for Energy Conservation and Planning (OECP)
Division of Energy Economics and Planning. Lund Institute of Technology
Renewables and Energy Efficiency Planning (REEP)
A New Approach to Energy Planning for Sustainable Development
Regional Energy Resources Information Center
© 1997 hsp59593@ait.ac.th