Electricity conservation opportunities within private university campuses in Bangladesh

Abstract

The mushroom growth of universities in the developing economies, in particular, is believed to be a key contributor to the relentless aggravation in the overall demand for electricity. Moreover, the large university campuses are often compared to cities whereby the associated electricity-consumption within these campuses are also referred to account for a bulk of the total urban electricity consumption. Thus, conservation of electricity within the campus has become a core agenda of universities in quest of ensuring respective campus sustainability. Against this backdrop, this paper aims to highlight and recommend the cost-effective and best-practiced techniques applied to conserve electricity within the private universities in Bangladesh. As part of the methodology, a cost–benefit analysis of electricity conservation is put forward in the context of a case study of the North South University, the largest private university in Bangladesh. The results from the analyses imply that proper implementation of the electricity conservation and efficiency enhancement techniques within the campus can effectively cut down the total electricity bills by almost one-third and simultaneously account for a 5% reduction in the total electricity demand within the campus.

An empirical analysis of the non-linear impacts of ICT-trade openness on renewable energy transition, energy efficiency, clean cooking fuel access and environmental sustainability in South Asia

“…In another study by Goldbach et al (2018) referred to digital ICT-based energy services being key to reducing the intensity of energy use. Similarly, linking ICT to the digitization of energy-saving mechanisms, Murshed (2020b) proposed the integration of computer-programmed applications for conserving power inside university campuses in Bangladesh. In a recent study by Bastida et al (2019), the authors claimed that ICT can stimulate changes in the behavior of households and enhance electricity use efficiencies by 0-5% in the context of the European Union economies.…”

“…On the other hand, keeping into cognizance the issue of energy security, from the demand-side channels, ICT can also be tapped to enhance the efficiency of energy use by identification of the sources of irregularities within the conventional power grids, that too in near-real-time (Schulte et al 2016). Thus, smartening of the old-fashioned malfunctioning grids through the implementation of ICT could be a remedy to the high degrees of system losses (or energy wastages) that are accounted due to the predominant technical inefficiencies engulfing the traditional power gridding systems across the globe (World Energy Council 2018;Murshed 2020b). Also, ICT can complement the energy conservation strategies for optimizing energy employment within buildings.…”

Modelling renewable energy adoption across south Asian economies: Empirical evidence from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka

“…International remittance inflow is the other major source of foreign exchange for the developing nations, which can be expected to induce movements in their respective shares of renewable energy in total energy consumption levels. In a study on 72 low‐ and middle‐income countries, Murshed (2020a) find statistical evidence in favour of foreign remittances stimulating consumption of renewable energy across the lower‐middle‐income economies while exerting a dampening impact on the REC trends within the lower and upper‐middle‐income economies. Moreover, foreign remittances were also opined to reduce the RES in aggregate energy consumption levels in the context of all the three income groups.…”

Oil price shocks and renewable energy transition: Empirical evidence from net oil-importing South Asian economies

“…Boosting the consumption levels of RE has also been appropriately acknowledged in the 2015 Paris climate change conference to play a defining role in keeping the global temperature rise below the critical level of 2°C per annum which is pertinent in combating the climate change adversities to a large extent. 1 Among the other positive impacts, REC is hypothesized to reduce the vulnerability of economies against the exogenous volatility of crude oil supplies (Rentschler 2013), stabilize energy prices (Shen et al 2010), enhance energy-use efficiency levels (Murshed 2019), expand electricity-access rates (Oseni 2012), attribute to rural electrification (Urmee et al 2009), facilitate off-grid electrification (Sen and Bhattacharyya 2014) and also create job opportunities within the local community (Sari et al 2008;Llera et al 2013).…”