A three-day International Energy Conference under the title - Decentralized Electrification, Network Interconnection and Local Power Markets, was held from March 2nd-4th organized by the Graduate School of Management (GSM) of Brac University, jointly with Technical University Berlin (Germany) and Carnegie Mellon University (USA), and the academic peer-reviewed journal Energy & Environmental Policy.
The conference was inaugurated by Prof. Dr. Vincent Chang, VC & President Brac University, Prof. Dr. Christian Thomsen, President TU Berlin, Mrs. Baerbel Hoehn, former Minister of State & Energy Commissioner for the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development, and Dr. Valerie Karplus, Professor, Carnegie Mellon University. The opening session was moderated by Dr. Sebastian Groh, Associate Professor at the GSM of Brac University. Each panelist congratulated Bangladesh on its unique success, transitioning from a basket case to graduation within only five decades. The two university presidents lauded the collaboration in the recent past between the two organizations and promised to intensify their collaboration further in the future while striving for more research publications.
The conference featured 20 sessions with participants from more than 40 countries with eminent researchers, policy-makers, and practitioners from Bangladesh and abroad. Sessions included discussions on how to power-up a country into the middle-income club featuring Dr. Ahsan Mansur from PRI, Dr. K.A.S. Murshed from BIDS, Prof. Mohammad Tamim from BUET, as well as Syed Mafiz Kamal representing CRI. Baerbel Hoehn requested Bangladesh’s policymakers to overcome fossil fuel lobbies, as she faced a similar situation while she was State Minister of Agriculture and Environment in Germany 20 years ago. Experts on the panel further stipulated that a better demand projection and use of renewable energy for power generation was needed, especially against the costly over-capacity in the electricity sector (40% and lower utilization factor with an energy mix dominated by gas & coal – 93%). It was further pointed out that there is USD 1 billion in subsidies for oil & gas per year, while there is no clear subsidy policy for renewables in place to date. The session further pointed out that Bangladesh’s world record of close to six million solar home systems (a success predominantly through IDCOL’s program) is threatened to become obsolete under the current electrification framework as the country moves closer to having 100% electricity access. Further sessions underlined that the grid was a social good, but it needs to be leveraged by distributed models. Muhammad Hossain, Director General, Power Cell, stressed that we need to make our national grid smarter. Discussions continued and pointed out that the country’s solar home systems, even though are small and of increasing age, are a good example, and smart integration of these systems would be the first step of learning how to make the grid smarter. Hannes Kirchhoff, the co-founder, and CTO of SOLshare stated that “Only with decentralized storage can a grid be really resilient. Any country has to be strong on storage, manufacturing, and recycling to be prepared for the energy future.” Pressed on the future goals of the Rural Electrification Board (REB) after achieving the goal of 100% electrification, Amzad Hossain, REB Member commented that the power sector's next target would be to get from quantity to quality.
A microenergy system (MES) - Photo Courtesy of SOLshare
Mohammad Alauddin, the Chairman of SREDA concluded the session by saying: “We should reduce our dependency on fossil fuels and raise our share in renewables. For this to happen, we need more innovation on business models and technology such as distributed storage and generation as well as policy reform.”
The conference also received high-quality academic paper contributions which will be published in a special issue in the peer-reviewed journal Economics of Energy & Environmental Policy, as well as in a dedicated Springer book. An all-female outlook session featured Sonia Bashir Kabir, Founder of SBK Tech Ventures and member of the Board of Trustees at Brac University, Dr. Angelika Fledderman, country director of GIZ, Hadley Taylor, Programme Manager of Sustainable Energy for All, Noara Kebir, Manager MicroEnergy International, and Divya Kottadiel, the Communications Director, Power for All, India.
Sonia Bashir Kabir stressed the institutional role of Brac University stating: “A lot of the psyche of the university comes from empathy, comes from solving the problems of the masses in the spirit of its founder Sir Fazle Abed – this has taken the university forward!”