The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has approved the debt financing and partial risk guarantees of Reliance Power for a total of 583 million dollars for the development of its 750 MW combined cycle plant and a Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) terminal in Bangladesh.
The project involves the installation of a combined cycle plant in Meghnaghat, near Dhaka, and a LNG terminal near Kutubdia Island, south of Chittagong. Reliance Power has signed an agreement with the Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDP) for the generation plant while for the terminal it has reached a use agreement with the governmental organism PetroBangla.
This is one of the largest investments in the energy sector undertaken so far in Bangladesh, worth one billion US dollars, the company acknowledges in a statement. A project that will increase the generation capacity of the region, which faces a growing demand for energy, and will contribute to improve its energy infrastructure.
Combined cycle in Bangladesh
On Tuesday, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) confirmed that it had reached an agreement with the company to finance the debt and partial project guarantees for a total of 583 million dollars.
Bordering Bangladesh, in India, as a means to combat the pollution problems that suffocate the country’s big cities, the Government plans to promote the modernization of utilities. To this end it studies the possibility of introducing legislative changes so that part of this cost can be passed on to consumers, as has been proposed by companies such as Reliance Power, Adani Power, GMR or NTP, Europa Press publishes.
At the Energy Forum of India, organized last October by CERAWeek in New Delhi, the Secretary General of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), Mohammed Barkindo, pointed out that India’s participation in the world oil demand is set to increase to more than 9% in 2040.
The situation in the neighboring country India
Precisely the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) has published that it predicts that the energy consumption of buildings in India will increase more rapidly than in other regions.
Specifically, the International Energy Outlook IEO2017, published every year by this organization, forecasts an average increase of 2.7% annually between 2015 and 2040, more than double the global average increase.
As explained, most of this growth is the result of increased use of electricity and natural gas (due to greater access to these sources of energy) and the increased use of appliances and equipment that use energy.
These data are surprising considering that the case taken as a reference by the IEO2017 shows that, among all the regions included in the report, India shows the lowest per capita energy consumption after Africa until 2040. However, the IEA also reports that this country has the highest projected gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate among the IEO2017 regions, with an average of 5.0% per year from 2015 to 2040.
Rapid economic growth, rising incomes, increasing population and urbanization are factors that influence the increase of buildings’ energy consumption in India, although energy use patterns vary between rural and urban populations, they note.
The EIA expects that disposable household income in India will increase by an average of 4.2% per year during the projection period, representing the second highest among the IEO2017 regions after China. Furthermore, India is expected to account for approximately 19% of the world population increase at that time, surpassing China as the world’s most populous country in 2023.
In terms of residential electricity consumption, the EIA expects the country to increase its consumption almost twice as fast as the total energy consumption of the residential sector from 2015 to 2040. According to its forecasts, the share of electricity supplied to the residential sector would increase from 46% in 2015 to 68% in 2040.
