Chief Guest: Honorable Adviser, (Ministry of Power Energy and Mineral Resources) Mr. Tapan Chowdhury Special Guest: Secretary Power Division , Dr. M. Fouzul Kabir Khan Chairperson: Chairman IDCOL and Secretary Economic Relations Division, Mr. Md. Aminul Islam Bhuiyan, CEO, IDCOL, Mr. M. Ehsanul Haque, and Managing Director, Dreams Power Private Ltd, Mr. Asaduzzaman Manik Distinguished Participants, ladies and gentlemen: A very good afternoon Today we have gathered here to inaugurate the first ever biomass power plant in Bangladesh. Couple of years back, producing electricity from rice husk was a dream in Kapashia, Gazipur. But the Dreams Power Private Ltd. with support from IDCOL has made this dream come true. The first always faces the biggest challenges. They are also the one who overcome all those challenges to become first. And hence they lay down a path for others to follow and create opportunities to be replicated. I believe that nothing speaks louder than success and hence successful projects will create interest among others and will remain as examples to be followed. I believe that this first endeavor, jointly implemented by Dreams Power and IDCOL should be replicated many times as possible. Through the Rural Electrification and Renewable Energy Development Project, commonly known as RERED Project, The World Bank is supporting these types of initiatives in Bangladesh. Under this project, IDCOL through its Partner Organizations have installed more than 150,000 solar home systems. Through Rural Electrification Board this project will install about 14,000 solar home systems and now again through IDCOL it has installed this biomass power plant. The project is also increasing access to electricity in rural Bangladesh through conventional grid network and will bring about 700,000 new consumers within the grid electricity network. The World Bank is committed to support Government of Bangladesh’s rural electrification goals. At present about 38% of population in Bangladesh has access to electricity, and Bangladesh is still behind the region in this important area. Expanding rural electrification is key to the prosperity of rural areas. While growth in electricity consumption is directly related to economic growth, electrification is also required to attain Millennium Development Goals: power is needed to maintain the “cold chain” for vaccines; likelihood of babies surviving to five years is significantly high in villages with electricity than those without; electricity also opens new avenues for job creation and thus increases income. We hope that IDCOL will promote biomass power plants in rural Bangladesh the same way it promoted solar home systems. The lessons learnt from installing this plant could be effectively used while preparing other biomass plants. This will certainly reduce the challenges for the next entrants and can attract new entrepreneurs to install biomass power plants in rural Bangladesh to meet the electricity demand. This will also create employment opportunities in rural Bangladesh. Besides supporting the conventional grid based electricity sector, we appreciate Bangladesh’s comparative advantage in the renewable energy resources and would be glad to support Bangladesh’s future needs to develop its renewable energy sector if the government so requests. At the end, I would like to thank the Honorable Adviser for providing the due importance to this project and inaugurating the commercial operation of this Power Plant. Given the lack of adequate power generation capacity in Bangladesh, promoting this type of decentralized renewable energy power plants will add to the country’s energy security and shall meet energy demand. And a special thank to Dr. Fouzul Kabir Khan, Secretary Power Division and former CEO of IDCOL, for his commitment and leadership which has brought IDCOL to its current stage. With his small team of dedicated and capable staff, IDCOL reached several milestones. We are glad to be associated with such an institution. Thank you.
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