There are moments in a nation’s development when romantic idealism must give way to hard-nosed realism, especially when you have to confront the bitter truth that you are a poor country on the lower rungs of development. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party’s (BNP) decision to move forward with coal extraction in Fulbari is one of those moments. It is a decision that deserves an unreserved welcome.

This is a step we should have taken twenty years ago. The failure to tap our own natural reserves decades ago left Bangladesh needlessly vulnerable to global economic shocks. But in energy policy, as in geopolitics, it is better late than never.

For many leftist parties and activists, the Fulbari anti-coal extraction protests of August 2006 remain one of their proudest moments of “red activism.” Several protesters were killed when security forces opened fire on thousands of demonstrators. The protests took place barely two months before the BNP government completed its tenure. The BNP never made a final decision on the proposed open-pit mine at Fulbari, but the next government effectively shelved the project — and it was never revived.

At the time, I was working as a correspondent for AFP. I remember reading numerous reports and commentaries in prominent newspapers that rallied public sentiment against Fulbari coal mining, especially open-pit mining, even as top coal-mining nations such as China and Australia relied heavily on this method. Nearly every major opinion piece concluded that the Fulbari project would create an environmental catastrophe, worsen air quality, and displace thousands who, it was claimed, would never be properly compensated or rehabilitated.

What we failed to consider was the broader cost of not extracting our coal. The protests halted the project at a time when nearly every major industrial nation was still relying on coal as a primary source of power — and when Bangladesh’s gas reserves were visibly declining. Within a decade, depletion became so severe that we began importing LNG to keep our power plants, fertilizer factories, and export-oriented industries running.

Scrapping the coal-mining projects — at a time when Bangladesh was still desperately poor and coal-fired power plants were the global norm — had a devastating long-term impact on our balance of payments. Annual coal extraction could have saved the country at least two billion dollars in energy imports. Instead, we left our coal resources in Fulbari, Dighipara, and Jamalganj untouched out of fear that exploiting fossil fuels would ruin the environment — and out of fear of leftist groups supported by influential newspapers.

This was, in my view, a suicidal decision for our energy security. It made us permanently dependent on imported Indian coal. Today, some 12,000 brick kilns burn Indian coal, collectively becoming the single largest source of air pollution in the country. We did not stop building coal-fired power plants either; on the contrary, we built some of the largest and fueled them with imported Indian and Indonesian coal. And guess who benefited. We even entered a power purchase agreement with an Adani plant that itself runs mostly on Indian coal.

Bangladesh was poor in the 2000s. It still is. We were never in a position to afford a coal-less future. China — with massive foreign reserves and the world’s largest solar energy capacity — still relies heavily on coal. Why? Because it refuses to compromise energy security. Its policymakers understand that control over energy is a fundamental pillar of national strength. Once you surrender that pillar at the altar of ideological activism, you expose your economy to every possible shock. A slight fluctuation in global energy markets can cripple your economic prospects. Bangladesh experienced this in 1973–74 and again in 2007–08. Yet we learned nothing.

The energy landscape today looks vastly different than it did in 2006. We cannot ignore the new global realities. The price of photovoltaic solar panels has collapsed over the past decade, making solar power generation extraordinarily cost-efficient — in many cases, cheaper to construct and operate than traditional coal-fired power plants.

At the same time, environmental concerns surrounding coal extraction and burning are real. Open-pit mining alters landscapes, while coal combustion remains a major contributor to carbon emissions, toxic fly ash, and severe urban smog. Worldwide, capital is shifting away from fossil fuels as international financial institutions phase out coal financing in favor of renewable energy grids.

Yet, for a developing nation like Bangladesh, domestic coal extraction still makes sense. Solar power, while clean and increasingly cheap, remains intermittent and requires vast land mass — a luxury in one of the most densely populated countries on Earth.

Extracting our own coal adds baseload stability to our energy grid. In an increasingly unstable world where conflict in the Middle East or Eastern Europe can instantly spike global shipping rates and fuel prices, domestic resource extraction shields our economy from volatile global energy markets. Most importantly, replacing expensive fuel imports with domestic coal keeps our foreign currency reserves intact and our balance of payments healthy.

Navigating the energy transition does not mean choosing poverty for the sake of climate purity. It means using the resources under our feet to build a resilient, self-reliant economy capable of funding its own green future. Extracting Fulbari’s coal is a long-overdue step toward self-reliance.

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Shafiqul Alam is the Editor of Daily Waadaa