Economy wide
With sufficient international support Bangladesh will be able to implement its 1.5°C domestic emissions pathway requiring emissions levels of 74-112 MtCO₂e/yr or 13-42% below 2012 levels by 2030 excluding LULUCF.
Bangladeshʼs total GHG emissions
excl. LULUCF MtCO₂e/yr
- 1.5°C compatible pathways
- Middle of the 1.5°C compatible range
- Current policy projections
- 1.5°C emissions range
- Historical emissions
2030 NDC
In its updated 2021 NDC, Bangladesh has put forward a stronger pledge of an unconditional emissions reduction of 6.73% below business as usual (BAU) level and a conditional target of 15.12% below BAU, both now covering all sectors of the economy as opposed to the previous NDC.
However, both pledges will lead to an increase of emissions of 197% and 149% above 2012 levels respectively by 2030 when excluding LULUCF.
1 Ministry of Environment and Forests. Second national Communication of Bangladesh to UNFCCC. (2012).
2 FAOSTAT. Land use Total Data Bangladesh. (2021).
3 Gerretsen, I. Bangladesh scraps nine coal power plants as overseas finance dries up. Climate Home News (2021).
4 Reuters. Bangladesh looks to cut future coal use as costs rise, Energy News, ET EnergyWorld. Energyworld.com (2020).
5 Dhaka Tribune. State Minister: 40% of Bangladesh’s power will come from renewables by 2041. Dhaka Tribune. (2021).
6 USAID. Greenhouse Gas Emissions by Sector Bangladesh. (2012).
7 Statista. Bangladesh – share of economic sectors in the gross domestic product 2019. (2020).
8 Governement of Bangladesh. Bangladesh Year Book-Chapter 6 Energy. (2019).
9 Ministry of Environment, F. and C. C. of B. Third National Communication of Bangladesh to UNFCCC. (2018).
10 International Trade Administration. Bangladesh – Power and Energy. (2020).
11 Bangladesh Planning Commission. Making Vision 2041 a Reality PERSPECTIVE PLAN OF BANGLADESH 2021-2041. (2020).
12 Cabraal, A., Ward, W. A., Bogach, V. S. & Jain, A. Living in the light: The Bangladesh solar home systems story. (2021).
13 Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh. Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) 2021-Bangladesh. (2021).
14 Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh. Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC)- Bangladesh. (2015).
15 SREDA. Energy Efficiency and Conservation Master Plan in Bangladesh. (2015).
16 IEA. Bangladesh – Countries & Regions. (2019).
17 Worldometer. Bangladesh Natural Gas Reserves, Production and Consumption Statistics. (2017).
18 SAARC. SAARC Energy Outlook 2030. (2018).
19 IEA. World Energy Balances 2019 (OECD and Selected Emerging Economies). (2019).
20 Huda, A. S. N., Mekhilef, S. & Ahsan, A. Biomass energy in Bangladesh: Current status and prospects. Renew. Sustain. Energy Rev. 30, 504–517 (2014).
21 Khan, M. S. et al. Prospect Of Biofuel In Bangladesh: Bioethanol And Biodiesel Production At Local Condition. In Joint Conference International Conference on Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology & International Conference on Ecology and Ecosystems (2017).
22 Rouf, M. A. & Haque, M. N. Role of Renewable Energy (Biogas and Improved Cook Stoves) for Creation of Green Jobs in Bangladesh. (2008).
23 Fisher, M. Introduction of Nuclear Power in Bangladesh Underway with IAEA Assistance. (2020).
24 BP. Statistical Review of World Energy 2020. (2020).
25 Ministry of Power, E. and M. R. Power System Master Plan. (2016).
26 Timilsina, G. R., Pargal, S., Tsigas, M. & Sahin, S. How Much Would Bangladesh Gain from the Removal of Subsidies on Electricity and Natural Gas? (2018).
27 Salam, R. A. et al. An Overview on Energy and Development of Energy Integration in Major South Asian Countries: The Building Sector. Energies 2020, Vol. 13, Page 5776 13, 5776 (2020).
28 Bangladesh National Building Code (BNBC) 2020. (2020).
29 Green Finance Platform. Bangladesh’s Green Transformation Fund (GTF). Green Finance Platform. (2019).
30 Kamal, M. National Budget Speech 2021-2022 (full text). [Speech transcript]. Daily Sun. (2021).
31 Climate Analytics. Decarbonising South and South East Asia: Shifting energy supply in South Asia and South East Asia to non-fossil fuel-based energy systems in line with the Paris Agreement long-term temperature goal and achievement of Sustainable Development Goals. (2019).
32 While global cost-effective pathways assessed by the IPCC Special Report 1.5°C provide useful guidance for an upper-limit of emissions trajectories for countries, they underestimate the feasible space for developed countries to reach net zero earlier. The current generation of models tend to depend strongly on land-use sinks outside of currently developed countries and include fossil fuel use well beyond the time at which these could be phased out, compared to what is understood from bottom-up approaches. The scientific teams which provide these global pathways constantly improve the technologies represented in their models – and novel CDR technologies are now being included in new studies focused on deep mitigation scenarios meeting the Paris Agreement. A wide assessment database of these new scenarios is not yet available; thus, we rely on available scenarios which focus particularly on BECCS as a net-negative emission technology. Accordingly, we do not yet consider land-sector emissions (LULUCF) and other CDR approaches.
33 Global cost-effective pathways assessed by the IPCC Special Report 1.5°C tend to include fossil fuel use well beyond the time at which these could be phased out, compared to what is understood from bottom-up approaches, and often rely on rather conservative assumptions in the development of renewable energy technologies. This tends to result in greater reliance on technological CDR than if a faster transition to renewables were achieved. The scenarios available at the time of this analysis focus particularly on BECCS as a net-negative emission technology, and our downscaling methods do not yet take national BECCS potentials into account.
34 At the regional level, models suggest coal-fired power to be phased out in South Asian countries by 2040.31
Long-term strategy
As of April 2022, Bangladesh has not submitted a long-term decarbonisation strategy to the UNFCCC.
2050 Ambition
Long-term 1.5°C compatible pathways show that Bangladesh could achieve GHG emissions reductions of about 59-73% below 2012 by 2050, or 34-53 MtCO₂e/yr excluding LULUCF.32
Remaining emissions
Remaining emissions, mostly coming from agriculture and waste could then be balanced through the deployment of carbon dioxide removal approaches such as from the land sector.33
Negative emissions
The country will need to implement stringent policies to reduce its LULUCF emissions which were a source of emissions in 2012 to further contribute to negative emissions.1,2
Sectors
Power
- In 2021, Bangladesh scrapped 90% of its planned coal expansion because of the rising costs of coal imports and increased price per generation unit, including cancelling plans to build ten coal-fired power plants.3,4 However, Bangladesh is substituting its previous expansion coal plans with gas instead of renewable energy.
- 1.5°C compatible pathways show that the power sector would need to fully decarbonise by around 2040. This would be driven by a phase out of natural gas by 2040 and an increased share of renewable energy – from 1% in 2019 to 19-26% by 2030 and 77-98% by 2040. This stands in contrast with the country’s plans to increase renewables based power generation to only 40% by 2041.5
Buildings
- The building sector in Bangladesh consumes 55% of total energy, with the residential sector accounting for 40% of electricity consumption. 1.5°C compatible pathways show high electrification of the building sector reaching 90-100% of total energy mix by 2050.
- Biomass is an important energy source in buildings, particularly for cooking, where 50% of energy demand was met with biomass in 2019. All scenarios see a rapid decline in biomass demand dropping to 3-22% by 2050.
Industry
- The industrial sector in Bangladesh consumes 33% of the total final energy consumption, with the sector accounting for 44% of electricity consumption in 2019. 1.5°C compatible pathways show that the share of electricity consumption increases to 76-80% by 2050 and direct CO₂ decline rapidly reaching levels of 2-6 MtCO₂/yr by 2050.
Transport
- While the transport sector of Bangladesh is at present completely reliant on fossil fuels, mostly oil and gas, 1.5°C compatible pathways show a the share of electricity in the transport sector increasing to 21-24% by 2050.