Bangladesh finds itself at a critical economic junction. Escalating energy import bills, shrinking foreign-exchange reserves, acute climate vulnerabilities and pressing energy security imperatives demand a swift expansion of solar and other green power sources.
The government’s Renewable Energy Policy 2025 provides an essential framework for this urgent green transition. Yet expanding renewable generation is not merely a matter of adding gigawatts to the national grid.
The underlying quality, total cost, institutional transparency and long-term financial viability of these capital projects are equally vital. Having previously suffered under onerous long-term power purchasing agreements, bloated capacity payments and poorly structured tenders, Bangladesh cannot afford to let green energy become a fresh haven for economically flawed projects.
The central question is how can the state ensure that the public procurement of solar and wind capacity remains open, highly competitive, technically rigorous and financially beneficial to the public purse?
The Renewable Energy Policy 2025, formally published by the Sustainable and Renewable Energy Development Authority in June 2025, marks a notable departure from earlier, fragmented policies. It offers a broader foundation for developing solar, wind, hydro, biomass, biogas and waste-to-energy assets.
Yet a policy document alone guarantees very little. To deliver genuine transparency, this framework must work seamlessly alongside the updated Public Procurement Rules 2025, which came into force in late September 2025.
Together, they mandate the comprehensive use of the electronic government procurement platform, known as e-GP, to foster robust market competition and institutional accountability across all public contracts.
True transparency must begin well before a formal request for proposals is published. Procuring authorities must first establish precise demand, verify grid availability, select appropriate technologies and calculate total lifecycle costs. No project should ever be tailored around a favored vendor or technology only to be dressed up as a competitive tender.
Bidding documentation ought to establish clear eligibility criteria, strict technical specifications and unambiguous evaluation benchmarks designed to widen, rather than artificially restrict, the field of qualified international and local bidders. Past missteps in thermal power procurement offer a stark warning.
The key takeaway for green power is not that private investment or long-term contracts are fundamentally problematic, but rather that every deal must be tested against strict value-for-money metrics, actual electricity yields and long-term fiscal liabilities.
Renewable assets deserve no special dispensation simply because they carry an environmentally friendly label; policymakers must enforce a strict principle rejecting economically unsound projects.
International precedent shows how transparency can be baked into energy procurement. India has established detailed competitive bidding guidelines for solar, wind and hybrid generation coupled with storage. In Britain, the government routinely publishes comprehensive auction results and contractual frameworks, embedding public disclosure across the entire financial support apparatus.
Germany has demonstrated the value of competitive auctions for utility-scale developments, while Japan uses structured bidding alongside rigorous market oversight. The universal lesson is clear: transparency does not end when a contract is awarded; it must endure across the lifecycle of the asset.
Bangladesh need not blindly copy any foreign model, but it should craft its own unified framework combining open tenders, independent technical verification, digital disclosure and diligent post-award monitoring.
Bangladesh has already made welcome progress through its upgraded e-GP system. However, for renewable energy, this digital infrastructure must evolve beyond simple e-tendering into an end-to-end transparency platform. Public disclosure of operational performance would enable parliamentarians, auditors, researchers, journalists and citizens to verify whether installed plants actually deliver their promised output. Transparency must also govern project execution.
A developer that wins a contract with an attractive tariff but fails to deliver anticipated capacity cannot be deemed a success. Independent engineers must strictly verify construction milestones, equipment standards, grid synchronization and ongoing generation.
Furthermore, every major state-backed project should undergo an independent post-completion audit to evaluate whether costs stayed within budget and delivered genuine public value.
The 2025 policy must therefore be reinforced by a dedicated procurement framework, standardized power purchase agreements and a comprehensive lifecycle accountability system. The state needs to track not just nominal megawatt capacity on paper, but the exact volume of green electricity delivered, the effective unit cost and the long-term fiscal risk exposure.
Moreover, strict conflict-of-interest rules must govern evaluation committees, technical advisers and government consultants. Any existing relationship between bidders and decision-makers must be disclosed and rigorously managed to prevent cronyism from compromising the selection process.
The ultimate goal must not be the vanity of adding solar megawatts to official ledgers. It must ensure that every project yields reliable electricity, prudent public spending and durable national economic benefit. Bangladesh’s future clean-energy initiative must be guided by an unyielding standard: energy must be clean not only at the point of generation, but also in its procurement, governance, pricing and public accountability.
Constructing another generation of economically unviable power assets is a burden the national economy simply cannot bear. Following the profound sacrifices made by its citizens for good governance, the country deserves nothing less than impartial evaluations, rigorous commercial discipline and clean procurement from its policymakers.
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Brigadier General (rtd) Munirul Islam is an ex-Director of Trust Bank PLC. In profession he is a Logistician and Procurement Specialist. He did his PhD from Jahangirnagar University. He is currently the MD and CEO of TRIPAX Solutions Ltd.