Ijaz Hossain

How does the government plan to tackle the looming gas shortfall in the upcoming summer?

In the 15-plus years of the last government, the energy and power sectors of Bangladesh have been all but destroyed.

With the new pricing formula in place, there is no way that BPC can lose money.

Continuous gas exploration and exploitation of renewable energy should be the two pillars of energy security in the country.

Bangladesh has not seen much success with refinancing of sustainable energy.

When LNG prices were high, not using LNG made sense. But does it make any sense now?

Energy crises are not rare, but a crisis of this magnitude that tends to derail world economic progress is.

The amendment to BERC Act alters its position as the sole authority for fixing energy prices.

Despite the fact that Bangladesh is a small country in terms of area; electricity grid coverage is very poor.

Until recently, load-shedding was something that people in Bangladesh had forgotten – at least in Dhaka.

Renewable energy (RE) comprises of energy from the sun (directly), usually called solar, biomass, wind, tidal, geothermal and hydro.

Energy security is a difficult thing to analyse for a country because it is dependent on many factors. To assist in the analysis, researchers have identified four components of energy security: i) Availability;

In the last five years Bangladesh has been maintaining a GDP growth rate between six and seven percent. Consequently, Bangladesh's energy consumption has been increasing at more than eight percent per year.

Has the finance minister addressed these issues and is this budget adequate to meet the challenges stated above? An equally important issue is this: do the responsible agencies have the capacity and capability of implementing such a large budget?

There was great hope that having tackled the immediate crisis, the government will put the energy sector on a robust track to achieve sustainability. But, it appears that it has been derailed. True, there is no load shedding, and the government will be able to meet increasing demands in the next two to three years, but many issues of the energy sector will plague us for a long time to come.