Background

Bangladesh, a developing country with a population of about 160 million, has enormous potential for development. The government's vision is to reach the status of a middle-income country by 2021. Energy is a prerequisite for development. Providing sustainable energy solutions requires a two-pronged approach. On one hand, it needs to address the generation of energy from renewable sources. On the other hand, Energy Efficiency (EE) measures need to be promoted and implemented in order to save fuel and electricity and make it available for other users.

Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency is one of the priority areas of German Government’s Technical Cooperation in Bangladesh. The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), helps policy-makers to translate their objectives into practice to make change work. GIZ started providing technical cooperation (TC) to Bangladesh government in the clean energy sector in 2004 through Productive Use of Renewable Energies (PURE). With successful evoloution from PURE to Sustainable Energy for Development (SED) and then to Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Programme (REEEP), GIZ continued its technical cooperation through capacity development of government agencies and other sector stakeholders, particularly Sustainable and Renewable Energy Development Authority (SREDA), the national nodal agency for promotion of renewable energy (RE) and energy efficiency (EE).

Capacity Development Strategy

REEEP follows a holistic approach for capacity development engaging individuals, organizations and the society at different levels. For individual competence building REEEP provides support to promote personal, social, technical, managerial, methodlogical and leadership competences in order to develop comprehensive proactive capacities of individuals and networking through joint learning processes. For organization development REEEP support to promote organisational learning and raise the performance and flexibility of an organization. For cooperation development among different stakeholders, REEEP promotes the establishment and development of cooperation between organisations to improve coordination and performance; networks for knowledge sharing and co-creation. The development of enabling legal, political and socio-economic frameworks is important, so that individuals, organisations and societies can develop and raise their performance capability.

Participation in initiation, design and implementation processes

Technical cooperation initiatives are designed to ensure vibrant participation from all relevant stakeholders. These initiatives are aimed to empower the stakeholders in decision making processes. To ensure participation from all relevant stakeholders at planning, design, implementation and evalution phases, specific value chain and stakeholder mapping are developed and specific capacity development instruments are applied.

Long-term commitment and enhancement of knowledge of the partner organisation

For the sustainable development of RE and EE sector of Bangladesh, a comprehensive approach incorporating people, organisation and framework condition development is required. REEEP initiates activities with proper alignment with SREDA to achieve the national RE and EE targets. Through sector assessment, people, organisation and framework conditions are assessed for development and in subsequent stages the gaps in capacity are filled up. Though the whole process, the capacity development of SREDA and relevant stakeholders is ensured. REEEP provides a comprehensive capacity development support through human resource development, organization development, development of policy environment and network development to SREDA for its institutional development.

Multi-level approach

REEEP follow a multi tier implementation approach for capacity development of all stakeholders involved at different tiers in the whole process.

Macro level

At macro level technical cooperation is extended through policy advocacy and policy dialogue to improve the framework conditions. Necessary technical cooperation is provided to SREDA for formulation of policy and regulations for energy management, incentive mechanism, standardisation and labeling and others. Trainings, workshops and awareness campaigns are arranged as needed for capacity development of relevant stakeholders attached to these policy and regulation implementation.

Meso level

The activities for capacity development at meso level are focused on enhancing human resource development, organisation development and network development, especially for SREDA and other utility officials so that they are capable enough to develop framework conditions for achieving national RE and EE targets.

Micro level

At micro level emphasis is given on development of effective and efficient instruments for relevant stakeholders. These instruments incorporate the development of suitable RE and EE technologies, business models, dissemination approaches for rolling out selected RE and EE technologies and network development. Capacity of the relevant stakeholders is improved so that they can use these instruments effectively.

REEEP has provided following training and logistic support, along with policy support to SREDA as direct measures of capacity development.