The government has approved the offer of a Denmark-Bangladesh $1.3 billion joint venture to carry out a detailed feasibility study for developing a 500 MW wind power project along the coast of the Bay of Bengal.
The proposed project site is located offshore of Cox's Bazar district.
Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP), and Copenhagen Offshore Partners (COP) in association with Bangladesh's Summit Group submitted the foreign direct investment (FDI) proposal in July this year, said a CIP-COP press release.
In July 2023, the outgoing ambassador of Denmark Winnie Estrup Petersen formally submitted the Danish company's investment plan to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina for the generation of the wind power project. However, it has received approval to implement the first phase of development with (site) exclusivity in the next 3 years.
"This multibillion-dollar proposal from Summit, CIP, and COP may kickstart a new wave of foreign and domestic investments, driving Bangladesh towards a truly climate-prosperous future," the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) said.
The project could be a competitive option for Bangladesh as the electricity generation from offshore wind power costs around $0.075 per kilowatt hour at the current rate, which is much cheaper than coal, LNG, and oil-fired power plants.
State Minister of State for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Nasrul Hamid earlier told the Daily Observer that the generation of 9,930 MW of electricity from renewable sources is in the pipeline in Bangladesh.
He said that 1194 MW of electricity is generated from renewable sources, but 825.23 MW of electricity is coming to the national grid. Another 1,262 MW power generation projects are underway through 30 projects from renewable energy and 8,668 MW power generation projects are under process, he added.
Bangladesh is producing around 4.34 per cent of electricity from renewable sources out of its 24,000 MW of total production capacity. However, BPDB installed a 60MW wind power project at Cox's Bazar, which is now in operation and supplying around 20MW electricity per day.
According to Power Cell DG Mohammad Hossain, "Bangladesh has started work on wind energy in 2000, however, the BPDB study report has said that Bangladesh has a wind speed of 5.75-7.75 meters per second, which has a potential of 30,000MW land-based wind power generation per day, but we don't have any study on offshore potential in this regard. This study will give us some new inputs."
He added, "We have eight windmill projects in different stages of completion in the country now, the combined capacity of these plants is around 357MW."
To harness offshore wind's potential in the country as it is a potential alternative energy, the Ministry of Power, Energy, and Mineral Resources has signed a contract with the Italian firm Centro Elettrotecnico Sperimentale Italiano (CESI) and its joint venture partners to conduct a pre-feasibility and detailed feasibility study for developing offshore wind zones in the Bay of Bengal.
The Italian consultancy firm already completed the first phase work and started second phase activities, he added. The second phase activities include identifying the two most suitable sites and finding out the best model to build a substation and transmission system, he further said.
In addition, the Sustainable and Renewable Energy Development Authority (Sreda) is implementing a wind resource assessment project in four sites in the country in cooperation with the World Bank.
Denmark-based investor CIP and developer COP made the plans for developing the billion dollar wind power project off the coast of the Bay of Bengal without any tender.
Once implemented, this offshore wind project will be the first of its kind in Bangladesh - and possibly in South Asia, enabling a technology transfer that would accelerate the learning curve for a nascent industry and reduce technological barriers to entry for future projects, the press release added.
The preliminary study findings suggest that hundreds of direct and indirect jobs would be created during the construction phase, in addition to dozens of high-skilled permanent positions for the 30-year operational phase of the project.
