Bangladesh is importing rejected ideas of power generation, said Prof Anu Muhammad, the man who is spearheading Save Sundarbans movement, today.

India and China have already shutdown many coal-based power plant because these are expensive and severely pollutant, he said at a programme held in Dhaka.

“But Bangladesh is adopting their abandoned project,” he said while speaking a joint press conference of National Committee for Saving the Sundarbans and Bangladesh Poribesh Andolon.

“State is not a business organisations. We don’t want that they will make profit from electricity leaving people to suffer and unhappy,” said columnist Syed Abul Moksud.

He urged the government to adopt a mass-oriented and environment friendly energy policy.

In the conference, Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis’s Director Tim Buckley and Energy Finance Analyst Simon Nicholas presented how Bangladesh can benefit from renewable energy instead of gas and coal-based power plant.

In their research ‘Bangladesh Electricity Transition: A Diverse, Secure and Deflationary Way Forward’, they said Bangladesh is currently excessively dependent on gas-fired power generation whilst domestic sources of gas are becoming increasingly unreliable.

The country’s plan to increase reliance on subsidised coal-fired generation is almost entirely dependent on imported coal and would increase energy security risk, reads the study.