Bangladesh among top 10 energy equity improvers

Bangladesh has made laudable progress in providing energy for a large number of people, but the country's dependence on imported energy has increased simultaneously, says the World Energy Trilemma Index 2019.

The index was recently published by the World Energy Council, a UN accredited body. In it Bangladesh has been ranked 114th among 128 countries, while in 2018, Bangladesh was in 107th position among 125 countries in the list.

The World Energy Council's Energy Trilemma Index ranks countries on how well they achieve a balance between energy security, energy equity and environmental sustainability.

A country's energy security reflects a nation's capacity to meet current and future energy demand reliably. Energy equity assesses a country's ability to provide universal access to affordable, fairly priced and abundant energy for domestic and commercial use. Environmental sustainability of energy systems represents the transition of a country's energy system towards decreased emission of carbon. 

In the World Energy Trilemma Index 2019 index, Bangladesh has secured 4th position among the top 10 Energy Equity improvers, with 112 percent progress since 2000. This is evidently an outcome of the government policy on improving basic energy access with some considerable success.

According to Bangladesh's Power Division, 90 percent of the people in the country had access to electricity in 2018.

Three other countries from this region are also in the 10 Energy Equity improvers' list.  Nepal is 2nd, Myanmar 3rd, and Sri Lanka is 9th in the ranking. 

According to The World Energy Trilemma Index 2019, increases in access to electricity and 'modern' levels of energy, and the increased affordability of energy have seen dramatic improvements in Bangladesh's Equity dimension. But the country's energy security is low due to reduced energy storage and increased dependency on imports.

The recent study by the World Energy Council also says that in Bangladesh, policies and investment have prioritised access to grid and off-grid electricity, while households have become progressively wealthier. 

At the same time, Bangladesh has reduced generation diversity within its systems, and may be stretching the reliability of its energy systems in the newly connected areas, thus reducing the country's Energy Security performance, says the report.

The ranking measures overall performance in achieving a sustainable mix of policies, and the balance grade highlights how well a country manages the trade-offs of the trilemma with "A" being the best. Bangladesh gets an overall grade of DDC. 

Ten countries achieved the top AAA balance grade in the 2019 World Energy Trilemma Index, representing top quartile performance in every dimension.

Among South Asian countries in the Energy Trilemma Index 2019, Sri Lanka is placed 44th, Nepal 101st, Pakistan 109th, and India 115th out of 128 countries.