Project Update – Spatial decision-making to underpin energy transformation in Bangladesh Recent analysis shows Bangladesh is facing its worst electricity crisis since 2013, with 2023 power outages (114 days so far) already exceeding those experienced across the entirety of 2022 (113 days). These outages are caused by a fuel shortage – but record-breaking heatwaves and natural disasters are also having a huge impact on the nation’s energy resilience. Renewable energy will be essential to Bangladesh’s sustainable energy future and the country has established ambitious targets to achieve 30% clean energy capacity by 2030, increasing to 40% by 2041. Whilst this will require significant investment, recent analysis shows that the cost of transitioning is likely to be much lower than current power sector subsidies, which have surged in the wake of the fuel price crisis.
What’s land got to do with it? Finding solutions to the green energy land challenge in Bangladesh A significant investment is required to get to targets set for 2030 and 2041. Under the current baseline only around 3% of renewables contributes to the country’s energy needs. Benefiting from high UV penetration, the obvious contender to reach this target is the rapid and intense installation of solar farms, otherwise known as utility-scale solar connecting to the nation’s power grid.
Enhancing Renewable Energy Investments and Access to Land in Bangladesh Bangladesh has set ambitious plans and targets for renewable energy (RE), seeking to generate more than 2000 MW a year. Currently the country’s RE capacity is just 750 MW, and it largely stems from small solar home systems. Utility scale solar requires large amounts of land and acquiring or leasing large areas of land is challenging particularly given the dense population, food security concerns and respecting the policy not to use agricultural land for other purposes. A strategy is in place to direct solar park investments to vacant, marginalised, and fallow government and private owned lands leveraging in particular Build Operate Own (BOO) PPPs with Independent Power Producers (IPP).
Putting a Land Lens to Renewable Energy Investments in Bangladesh In carrying out this assignment, LEI has partnered with Bangladesh company Environmental and Resource Analysis Centre (ENRAC), bringing safeguards, planning and design for infrastructure experience along with software systems for data analysis and planning. Another partner is Australia’s University of New South Wales, School of Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy (SPREE)[1], specialists in photovoltaic installations in a range of large scale national and international settings. To successfully deliver this project long-time colleague of LEI, Robert Cross, will be leading our team. He is a land specialist, with 30 years’ experience in land administration in various developed and developing countries, including Bangladesh.
Message from the Managing Director It has been a super productive and exciting time here at LEI over the past six months with tenders, international conferences and bigger still, project mobilisations. We won’t be enjoying long summer holidays like our northern partners but aiming for some crisp short winter-breaks down-under instead.
LEI are attending the World Bank’s Annual Land Conference, 13-17 May 2024 In just a few days the World Bank’s newly relaunched Annual Land Conference will commence in Washington DC! The 2024 Conference, which has the theme Securing Land Tenure and Access for Climate Action, aims to highlight effective strategies for securing land tenure and access in support of climate change mitigation and adaption.
An Update from LEI The LEI team have managed, collaborated and innovated throughout the past year across multiple projects in locations including the Mekong, Nauru, Bangladesh and Indonesia. We have also delved deeply with various partners bidding on projects in Africa. These have been exciting and rapid knowledge-juggling periods.
Our Land Thoughts – The ‘DOS’ and ‘DON’TS’ of the land acquisition processes: navigating a just path to sustainable investments National development agendas usually commit to the building of new infrastructure at a significant scale – promising upgraded or new roads, ports, airports, rail and energy infrastructure, housing, or urban development. With these commitments inevitably comes a demand for land. Although the land requirements for such investments will usually be context-specific, we know certain types of investments have enormous land requirements regardless of location. Utility scale solar or wind farms, for example, necessitate large surface areas to produce energy, particularly vis-à-vis traditional energy sources such as coal. Given the finite character of land, and the growing competition for different land uses, public land that is readily available for such investments is in diminishing supply.
An Update from LEI Madison Durham, who spent 3 months with us as an intern, heads back to complete her final year of her Bachelor of Law (Honours)/Bachelor Arts at the Australian National University – you can see what she got up to here.
Happy International Women’s Day 2023 from LEI Instead it means that women enjoy secure access to, control over and ownership of land on an equal footing with men. Research shows that there are positive multiplier effects when women’s land rights are secure – benefits accrue not just for women’s economic empowerment, but also for food security at the household level, child malnutrition and investments in natural resource management.
