Bangladesh's energy infrastructure is quite small, insufficient and poorly managed. The per capita energy consumption in Bangladesh is one of the lowest (321 kWH) in the world. Noncommercial energy sources, such as wood fuel, animal waste, and crop residues, are estimated to account for over half of the country's energy consumption. Bangladesh has small reserves of oil and coal, but very large natural gas resources. Commercial energy consumption is mostly natural gas (around 66%), followed by oil, hydropower and coal.
Electricity is the major source of power for most of the country's economic activities. Bangladesh's installed electric generation capacity was 10289 MW in January, 2014;[1] only three-fourth of which is considered to be ‘available’. Only 62% of the population has access to electricity with a per capita availability of 321 kWh per annum. Problems in the Bangladesh's electric power sector include corruption in administration, high system losses, delays in completion of new plants, low plant efficiencies, erratic power supply, electricity theft, blackouts, and shortages of funds for power plant maintenance. Overall, the country's generation plants have been unable to meet system demand over the past decade.
