An Update from LEI

Madison Durham, who spent 3 months with us as an intern, heads back to complete her final year of her Bachelor of Law (Honours)/Bachelor Arts at the Australian National University – you can see what she got up to here.

Recent analysis shows Bangladesh is facing its worst electricity crisis since 2013, with 2023 power outages (114 days so far) already exceeding those experienced across the entirety of 2022 (113 days). These outages are caused by a fuel shortage – but record-breaking heatwaves and natural disasters are also having a huge impact on the nation’s energy resilience. Renewable energy will be essential to Bangladesh’s sustainable energy future and the country has established ambitious targets to achieve 30% clean energy capacity by 2030, increasing to 40% by 2041. Whilst this will require significant investment, recent analysis shows that the cost of transitioning is likely to be much lower than current power sector subsidies, which have surged in the wake of the fuel price crisis.

MRLG Phase 2 will end on the 31st December and seamlessly starting on the 1st January 2023 will be Phase 3. This funding commitment by Switzerland (SDC), Germany (BMZ-GIZ) and Luxemburg allows the alliances to coordinate and plan sustainable actions for the coming 3 years to improve land tenure access for smallholder farmers through policy and practice changes. We look forward to sharing the Phase 2 operational report in the new year, along with the very exciting launch, planning and information sharing 3-day session to be held 28 Feb – 2 March, Luang Prabang with core MRLG partners – exemplary effort by the team for the completion of MRLG Phase 2.

A significant investment is required to get to targets set for 2030 and 2041. Under the current baseline only around 3% of renewables contributes to the country’s energy needs. Benefiting from high UV penetration, the obvious contender to reach this target is the rapid and intense installation of solar farms, otherwise known as utility-scale solar connecting to the nation’s power grid.

It creates a financial value for forest carbon, incentivising forest protection rather than forest destruction. This is critical given the mitigation potential of REDD+ is in the realm of 5 gigatons of carbon per year, coming behind only the energy sector in terms of mitigation potential.

In carrying out this assignment, LEI has partnered with Bangladesh company Environmental and Resource Analysis Centre (ENRAC), bringing safeguards, planning and design for infrastructure experience along with software systems for data analysis and planning. Another partner is Australia’s University of New South Wales, School of Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy (SPREE)[1], specialists in photovoltaic installations in a range of large scale national and international settings. To successfully deliver this project long-time colleague of LEI, Robert Cross, will be leading our team. He is a land specialist, with 30 years’ experience in land administration in various developed and developing countries, including Bangladesh.