State Minister for Power Iqbal Hassan Mahmood on Wednesday stressed the need for proper utilisation of renewable energy and creation of mass awareness about it to reduce the gap between electricity demand and generation, reports BSS.

He was speaking as the chief guest at the inaugural session of a national workshop on awareness building and motivation under the project Promotion of Renewable Energy, Energy Efficiency and Greenhouse Gas Abatement at the LGED Bhaban in the city.

Bangladesh Centre for Advance Studies (BCAS) and Asian Development Bank jointly organised the workshop. Senior Fellow of BCAS and Team Leader of the Project Dr M. Eusuf presented the Keynote paper.

Chaired by BCAS Executive Director Dr A Atiq Rahman, the inaugural session was also addressed by Dr M I Sharif of BCAS and ADB Energy Specialist Samuel Tumiwa.

The state minister said per capita energy consumption is one of the main factors for the development of any country. But unfortunately the per capita energy consumption in Bangladesh is very low among the developing countries.

He said we have to continue our efforts in increasing the capacity of generation, transmission and distribution of electricity. But it needs about 2.85 billion US dollars by the year 2007, which is almost impossible task for the government to collect it within this short span of time, he added.

Iqbal said our grid electricity depends almost totally on natural gas reserves. We have also to take up the challenge posed by dearth of fossil fuels and move forward to on environmentally clean energy supply route avoiding hazards from tampering the atmosphere with emissions from burning of fuels, he added.