On any given day this past May, Bangladesh's power planners faced an uncomfortable arithmetic. On 9 May, the country generated and imported around 312,620 megawatt-hours of electricity.
Gas supplied roughly 127,700 MWh and coal another 105,400 MWh, both imported, expensive, and vulnerable to the next price spike in a market we do not control.
Solar contributed just 5,377 MWh, and renewable energy still accounts for only about 2.3 per cent of grid-based generation, against a global average near 33.8 per cent.
Into this strained system, a new load is arriving: the electric vehicle.
The Bangladesh Road Transport Authority has now registered 515 electric cars, with more in the pipeline, and the draft Electric Vehicle Industrial Development Policy 2025 signals that four-wheeler adoption is moving from novelty to plan.
Global automakers are committing to electrification, and Bangladesh has set a target of 30 per cent plug-in electric vehicles in its transport mix by 2030. The direction is set; the question is what powers these cars once they arrive.
Charging EVs from a grid that is two-thirds dependent on imported fossil fuel solves a tailpipe problem while deepening an import problem.
In FY2024-25, private oil- and coal-fired plants drew capacity payments of roughly Tk 9.5 and Tk 5.9 per kWh, respectively, costs that flow straight into the subsidy burden and onto consumers.
Primary energy imports climbed from 47.7 per cent to 62.5 per cent of supply between FY2020-21 and FY2024-25. Adding EV demand to that mix, unmanaged, imports more diesel and LNG by another name.
There is an obvious alternative directly overhead.
Bangladesh receives solar irradiation of roughly 4.5 to 6 kWh per square metre per day across most of its territory, with around 6.5 hours of usable sunshine a day, levels 50 to 100 per cent higher than much of Europe receives.
Solar plants keep generating through daylight hours, exactly when commercial charging demand peaks, and they stay largely insulated from global fuel-price swings.
Pairing EV charging stations with solar PV is no fringe idea but the most logical match between a clean resource we have in abundance and a clean load we are about to acquire.
So why hasn't it happened? My own research on the commercialisation of four-wheeler EV charging in Dhaka, presented at the International Conference on Business Research in 2024, found that the obstacles are rarely technological; they are financial, regulatory and institutional.
The barriers are real but solvable. The first is upfront cost: solar charging stations demand substantial capital for panels, inverters, battery storage and land, even though running costs are low.
In an economy where low-interest green financing is scarce, that initial outlay scares off private investors, and a chicken-and-egg demand problem compounds it.
With four-wheeler EV adoption still nascent, charging stations struggle to generate steady revenue, which makes the high capital cost look even riskier.
My study found that of the EV companies operating in Bangladesh, only one had reached the mature, market-diversification stage; most were still at the prototype or business-startup phase.
The second is land: high-capacity solar charging needs space, and in cities like Dhaka, land is both scarce and costly. Rooftop solar offers a partial answer but rarely enough on its own for fast charging.
The third is policy: Bangladesh has an EV Charging Guideline and a new Renewable Energy Policy 2025 that, for the first time, prioritises utility-scale solar and battery storage. But there is still no integrated framework that explicitly links EV charging to solar deployment, with clear incentives, tariffs and feed-in arrangements, and investors do not commit against ambiguity.
The fourth is intermittency: solar output dips in the monsoon and at night, so reliable charging requires battery storage or grid backup, and Bangladesh's distribution grid, with transmission and distribution losses still above 10 per cent, is still not optimised for decentralised generation.
What would a serious push look like?
First, treat EV charging and solar as one policy, not two. A dedicated framework should tie every new commercial charging licence to a renewable-generation or net-metering requirement, backed by tax holidays, streamlined approvals and clear tariffs. Bangladesh already offers VAT relief on locally manufactured e-bikes; extending targeted incentives to solar-integrated charging is a natural next step.
Second, fix the financing. Green bonds, concessional climate finance and a mandate for local banks to lend to renewable projects can break the upfront-cost barrier. Public-private partnerships, the same model used to build other national infrastructure, can spread the risk that no single investor will bear alone.
Third, go hybrid, not heroic. The realistic model is solar plus battery storage plus grid backup, sized so that daytime solar carries the bulk of charging demand while the grid covers the gaps. Research on PV-grid-battery systems for charging stations in Bangladesh consistently finds this configuration the most viable. IEEFA estimates that adding just 3,000 MW of grid-connected renewables, alongside other reforms, could save the Power Development Board around US$1.2 billion a year.
Fourth, build the people and the awareness. Universities, technical institutes and private firms must jointly train the technicians who can install and maintain hybrid solar-EV systems, and demonstration projects must show policymakers and the public that this works here, not just in theory.
The convenient truth is that Bangladesh's two energy headaches, a fossil-heavy, import-dependent grid and a coming wave of electric vehicles, share a single answer.
We can let EVs deepen our dependence on imported fuel, or we can let the sun, which falls on this country more generously than on most of Europe, do the work.
Vision 2041 and our Paris commitments both point the same way. Turning that vision into charging stations, though, will take more than sunshine: coordinated policy, patient finance and the political will to build for the country we intend to become.
Nayma Akther Jahan is a Lecturer and Research Associate at the Centre for Sustainable Development, University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh, and an environmental researcher specialising in energy, climate and urban resilience. This piece draws on N.A. Jahan, M.S. Hossain & S.B. Alam, "Commercialisation of Four-Wheeler Electric Vehicles Charging Station in Bangladesh: Challenges and Opportunities," International Conference on Business Research, University of Moratuwa (2024). [email protected]
