Imagine there were no Sundarbans movement. Two coal-fired units of the Rampal power plant would already be towering over 1,834 acres of land in Bagerhat's Rampal upazila. In reality, there is now one unit. As the Sundarbans movement against the Rampal coal power plant grew stronger, the government retreated from one unit, reserving the land earmarked for the second for a solar power plant instead.  Fourteen years on, that land—and that much-advertised shift to clean energy—still lies unused and idle.

Now, after the war in the Middle East triggered a global fuel crisis and at a time when the new government is finally considering reducing dependence on foreign fuel, a proposal to build a 442‑megawatt solar power plant by 2030 is on the Planning Commission's agenda. The proposed production cost is 6.18 taka per unit, and it requires the Power Development Board's (PDB) investment. This proposal has come at a time when the PDB is already burdened with debt. Its unpaid bills are reportedly around 50,000 crore taka.

In such a situation, a deep sigh naturally arises. If the solar project had already been built on this land, could we not use the solar electricity now? 

For years, plans to build a second unit at Eastern Refinery to expand capacity were only discussed; the initiative has been taken only now, after a long delay. In the current oil crisis, if ERL's second unit were operating, Bangladesh could save about 2.64 thousand crore taka a year by locally refining imported crude at current exchange rates—though the exact amount would depend on international prices. If the project had raised annual refining capacity from 1.5 to 4.5 million tons, and if there were technical capacity to refine Russian crude, the extra cost of importing refined products would not be necessary, and Bangladesh could now refine and use Russian oil itself.

Here too, a deep sigh arises: although an initiative was taken to implement this project, it has not received formal approval in the past fifteen years. Instead of expanding our own refinery capacity, a pipeline was built from Numaligarh, India, to import refined oil. Now, in this crisis, some diesel is arriving from India, but it is far below our needs, and India—facing its own crisis—no longer sees Bangladesh as a priority.

Meanwhile, since 1995, BAPEX has discovered three gas fields in Bhola, with recoverable reserves of about 1,432 BCF, but there is still no pipeline to carry gas beyond the district, and even within Bhola, it is not fully used. Shahbazpur alone can produce 150 million cubic feet per day, yet at most 75 million is used, and production has not started at the other two fields. Because there is no pipeline, Bhola's large reserves lie effectively unused while we spend vast amounts of foreign currency importing LNG. If we had this pipeline, we could save a huge sum now.

At present, the country imports about 1 billion cubic feet of LNG per day; if Bhola's gas were fully utilised, it would be equivalent to roughly 1,432 days—or about four years—of such imports. Over the last seven years, around 200 thousand crore taka has been spent on LNG imports, an average of 28 thousand crore taka per year; in this year alone, around 50 thousand crore taka will be spent. Yet even now, we are told that there is intense reflection underway on whether building a pipeline at this stage would make the project profitable. 

Another grief is our failure to develop the untapped offshore gas. Some international companies signed production sharing contracts and then left when their interests clashed with Bangladesh's. Instead of waiting for foreign investors, the government could have used BAPEX for offshore exploration, built its capacity with foreign technology, and hired companies and consultants—while keeping resources under full national ownership and control. Whenever this was proposed, the standard counterargument was that BAPEX lacked capacity and that the country lacked funds to invest.

Now, we see the fund is in place to ensure LNG imports. The government now pays about 6 thousand crore takas in subsidies every year. From 2018 to now, the total amount paid in such subsidies exceeds what would have been needed for offshore gas exploration. Certainly, there would have been risk; perhaps after investing, it would have taken time to see the benefits. But the money that is now being poured into urgent imports was no less risky in economic terms. 

In a poor, loan-burdened country, unused capacities roam among us like a permanent, collective sigh.

On top of all this, we often hear that coal power plants remain idle due to a lack of coal supply. Two coal-fired power plants were built right beside the Payra port so that imported coal could be supplied through it. One is the Patuakhali Thermal Power Plant, a joint venture with the Chinese company NORINCO, and the other is the Payra power plant, a joint venture with China National Machinery Import & Export Corporation. Because of the navigability crisis at Payra Port, coal transportation has become uncertain. It was known in advance that, due to its location, Payra Port would require a large sum of money every year for dredging just to remain operational. Due to persistent difficulties in importing coal, these power plants are often forced to shut down. When, after such large public and private investment, these plants cannot be used as planned, it breeds unavoidable frustration. In a poor, loan-burdened country, unused capacities roam among us like a permanent, collective sigh. 

Another deep sigh in power and energy is the ballooning capacity charge. Most power subsidies now go to paying for electricity that is never produced: 42 thousand crore taka last year, 32 thousand crore the year before. The JICA‑backed Power Master Plan overestimated demand, so plants built in the 2010s now sit at over 40 per cent idle. Even allowing 10 per cent for standby and 10 per cent for maintenance, unused capacity is still 6,770 megawatts—23.7 per cent of total installed capacity. Citizens' money is paid to cover this cost.

Another deep sigh arises over the country's first coal mine. Many experts now see Barapukuria as a mistake: the underground method has caused land subsidence, damaged homes, and ruined fertile fields, while black waste dumped into water bodies poisons land and aquatic life. The mine has lowered the groundwater table, creating severe water shortages; production is often halted, electricity for locals is unreliable, and promised jobs have scarcely materialised.

Across Bangladesh, many projects are mired in frustration from start to finish. Why does our energy future keep slipping away, and why can't we stop it? The answers lie in which projects we chose to prioritise—and which we chose to neglect, and why. When there is no will to implement, officials cite a lack of funds, doubts about profitability, and fear of risk. Yet favoured projects are approved without proper scrutiny or feasibility studies. When implemented, the projects are often overridden by foreign lobbies, real risks are ignored, and the public is told we lack capacity or that foreigners are more efficient. Financial analyses are sometimes skewed or manipulated to justify decisions that have already been made. The strategic importance was largely neglected. Instead of prioritising long‑term benefits, short‑term fixes for immediate crises were given priority.

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Whenever the issue of building national capacity is raised, economic nationalism is swiftly painted in a negative light. It is labelled anti‑foreign investment, anti‑modernity, and dismissed as an outdated doctrine clung to by "backward" populations; in this way, alternative ideas and dissenting voices are effectively confiscated and silenced. Yet those who advance such criticisms seem blind to the fact that the developed world itself clings tightly to economic nationalism and keeps wars simmering from country to country in the name of protecting its interests. Even when powerful actors help push Bangladesh into crisis, some of our own opinion‑makers still miss what is needed. They lean on narrow, financial cost‑benefit analyses to justify unnecessary projects or reject necessary ones.

In the end, electricity and energy knowledge—and the policies built on it—cannot be treated as a narrow technical or financial matter. They are inseparably tied to economics, politics, the environment, and society. Solving an energy crisis is not something engineers can do alone, nor can we simply let economists dictate prices and call it a day. Sound policy demands that we read our own culture, the habits and behaviours that have grown in our society, the lessons of our history, the risks of geopolitics, the political economy of energy, its impact on the environment—and, above all, that we hold to a clear guiding principle: energy is for people, people are not for energy. Unless we begin to weave all of these strands together, the deep sigh of Bangladesh's energy sector will only grow deeper; if we do, it could yet become the starting point of a very different story.
 

Dr. Moshahida Sultana is an Associate Professor, Department of Accounting, University of Dhaka.

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