Alternatives and conservation initiatives

The government-run Infrastructure Development Company Limited (IDCOL) told the FE recently that its domestic biogas development component, launched in 2006 under the 'National Domestic Biogas and Manure Programme', looks like winning more and more households as an affordable alternative source of energy. Only three per cent of the population has access to piped natural gas -- which is said to be dwindling fast -- while the majority makes do with twigs and leaves and other biomass, like agricultural waste and cow dung, a very time-consuming and inefficient method that also generates much smoke and soot. The wisdom of developing and popularising biogas plants therefore speaks for itself. About 18000 of them have already been set up, with 9000 more expected within this year, and it is targeted to reach a total of 37,700 by 2012. The government plan is to set up as many as 0.15 million biogas plants in the next five years and the IDCOL has been offering fairly easy terms for financing such waste-to-energy-to-fertiliser plants, which hopefully would help Bangladesh earn a good amount of carbon credits as well. IDCOL's other initiative was to popularise the conservation of energy by switching light bulbs -- replacing conventional incandescent lights with advanced energy-savers. Although these come with recycling hazards due to the mercury in the bulbs, and are quite pricey, they have been lauded as the soundest, swiftest and most economic method of energy conservation, as they need far less power and are said to last 'ten times longer'. Considerable energy wastage result from a general apathy and lack of public accountability, not least from the extravagance of a relatively small elite of domestic and commercial users in Bangladesh, not to forget top government circles. It is not unusual to find many government-funded institutions and offices to leave fans and lights and air conditioners on for no reason. This has to be addressed too. Energy-efficient, lower-wattage, compact fluorescent lights (CFL) were initially distributed among nine-million households in the three main cities, Dhaka, Chittagong and Sylhet. Then a bulb exchange-program followed, encouraging citizens to trade conventional bulbs for energy efficient ones, and it was not long before people started buying them of their own accord -- a triumph both for CFL manufacturers and energy conservationists. The potential for conservation of electricity with such bulbs is said to be considerable. A power division official claimed during the first year of the introduction of CFLs that it would be possible to save at least 350 megawatt of electricity -- equivalent to building a fairly big power plant at a cost of some US$ 500 million at least -- provided the plan for total replacement of conventional light bulbs with CFLs were implemented. The value of IDCOL's biogas plants together with its CFL-initiative cannot be under-estimated when the country's energy crisis is so acute. Energy-conservation programmes worldwide leave no doubt that the financial benefits of emphasising efficiency are quite substantial. It would be worth noting here that the Indian Institute of Technology and bulb maker Philips India had been working together for decades to manufacture CFLs domestically. Bombay's electric utility had a leasing scheme similar to that of a US municipal utility in Massachusetts. In a bid to find ways to make compact bulbs affordable it leased the lights to customers for a modest monthly fee which covered the cost of the bulbs, marketing, management and even anticipated breakage. Bulb manufacturers in Bangladesh might adopt similar methods of motivating consumers.