Download Link for Energy & Power Vol 23 Issue 14/userfiles/EP_23_14.pdf

 The past 16 months have underscored a hard truth: Bangladesh’s power and energy crisis is not the product of a single government or moment, but the cumulative result of long-standing policy distortions and delayed decisions. The interim government deserves credit for restoring regulatory authority, repealing controversial emergency laws, and sharply reducing outstanding sectoral arrears. These steps brought temporary stability to a system that was on the brink of financial collapse. Yet stabilization is not reform. By cancelling LNG expansion plans, solar project approvals, and fuel import agreements without clear alternatives, the interim administration created new uncertainties at a time when investor confidence was already fragile. Gas shortages remain severe, import dependence has climbed to unsustainable levels, and subsidy pressures continue to strain public finances. These unresolved issues now form a heavy inheritance for the next elected government. The challenge ahead is fundamentally political as much as technical. Ensuring energy security will require difficult choices—reviving domestic gas exploration, taking a long-delayed decision on coal extraction, accelerating renewable deployment, and expanding LNG infrastructure despite fiscal and environmental constraints. None of these options is risk-free, but inaction carries the greatest cost.

Above all, governance must improve. Transparent contracting, empowered regulation, and insulation of energy policy from political cycles are essential to restoring credibility. Without decisive early action, energy shortages will once again undermine industrial growth, employment, and export competitiveness. The next government’s success may well be judged not by new promises, but by how quickly it confronts the sector’s inconvenient realities.

Happy New Year. Wishing everyone a year of progress and possibility.

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