Adani Group offers Bangladesh to export 1,600 MW of electricity more

India’s Adani Group has placed a fresh proposal to export another 1,600 MegaWatt of electricity to Bangladesh, according to highly placed sources in Dhaka.

"The entire amount of electricity will be from renewable sources. Of this, 1,000 MW is solar power while the remaining 600 MW is from hydropower," a highly placed source in the Power Division recently told UNB.

Currently, Adani Group, the Indian conglomerate, is exporting 1,600 MW of electricity from its Godda power plant in eastern Indian state of Jharkhand, exclusively built for Bangladesh under a 25-year power purchase agreement (PPA).

The new proposal came from Adani Group very recently when its head Gautam Adani visited Dhaka and paid a courtesy call on Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, according to official sources who requested anonymity as they are not authorised to speak to the media.

The sources said that 600 MW of the proposed hydropower will be coming from Nepal where Adani Group will set up a plant.

On the other hand, the proposed 1,000 MW solar power will be coming from India where Adani is now setting up renewable energy plants.

"We heard Adani Group was given a green signal on its proposal", another highly placed source told UNB.

He also mentioned that the initiative to respond to the Adani Group's proposal is part of the government's plan to raise its share of renewable energy to 40 per cent in the total power generation by 2041 when the country plans to increase its generation capacity to 60,000 MW.

State Minister for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Nasrul Hamid recently said that the generation of 9930 MW of electricity from renewable sources is in the pipeline in Bangladesh.

He also informed that Bangladesh is in the process to import electricity to be generated from renewable sources from neighbouring countries as the government has given special importance to renewable energy.

He said that 1194 MW of electricity is now generated from renewable sources, but only 825.23 MW is coming to the national grid.

Another 1262 MW power generation projects are underway through 30 projects from renewable energy and 8668 MW power generation projects are under process, he added.

Nasrul said this when the outgoing Danish Ambassador Winnie Estrup Peterson called on him at his ministry office in the Bangladesh Secretariat last week.

A joint venture of two Danish renewable energy firms has submitted an investment proposal to the government of Bangladesh to develop a commercial, utility-scale offshore wind project with an initial capacity of 500 MW, valued at USD 1.3 billion off the coast of the Bay of Bengal.

The proposal came from the world’s leading dedicated greenfield renewable energy investor and developers, Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP) and Copenhagen Offshore Partners (COP).