Just 15 countries account for 98% of new coal-power development4 Sep 2024 07:25
Bangladesh ranks fourth in the world for coal power under development, with 6.3GW proposed and 3.2GW under construction as of June 2024, according to the GCPT.
While coal generation more than doubled from 2022 to 2023, Bangladesh has not announced any new coal plant proposals since 2019. A suite of problems continue to plague the fuel, further complicated by political unrest throughout the country in July and August 2024.
These problems include an ongoing dollar shortage, the high cost of imported coal and a buildup of unpaid electricity bills, which intensified a nationwide power crisis in the first half of 2024, leading to fuel supply gaps and load shedding, despite sufficient power capacity.
For example, at the Matarbari power station, Coal Power Generation Company Bangladesh had yet to receive payment for power supplied to the national grid from the plant’s operating coal unit from December 2023 to May 2024. The company is nevertheless seeking to finance an expansion at the power station, after losing the project’s original funding in 2022, when its sponsor, Japan, pledged to stop publicly funding new coal.
At S. Alam’s Banshkhali power station, units that had completed construction by late 2023 were still not operating at full capacity in February 2024, due to grid constraints.
The country saw just 0.7GW of coal power come online in the first half of 2024 at the contested Rampal power station, against 1.3GW of planned coal capacity cancelled in the same period.
In March 2024, a planned mine associated with the Phulbari power station – a fiercely contested project that has been proposed in various forms for decades and has resulted in the death of at least three protestors – secured a $1bn funding agreement with PowerChina.
Though the power station was not included in this initial financing agreement, China has not explicitly ruled out funding the plant, despite its 2021 pledge to stop building new coal plants abroad. The project sponsors say that they expect the coal plant proposal to “become attractive” due to their proximity.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-just-15-countries-account-for-98-of-new-coal-power-development/
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