Moving beyond gas: Can Bangladesh leapfrog and make the energy transition just by exploring the role of geothermal energy and gas infrastructure?

How a natural gas rich developing economy like Bangladesh growing at ~7% annually in the prepandemic period can envision a roadmap for Sustainable and Just energy transition using the investments in gas infrastructure is discussed in the article. Bangladesh is caught up in a complex combination of likely risks of rising stranded assets, redundancy of jobs in the fossil fuel sector, need for cleaner available innovation and technology through global partnership to meet the inevitable increase in energy service demand. We make a case for the new use option of Bangladesh drilling wells and the infrastructure dedicated so far to extract and use domestic natural gas reserves. Utilization of gas exploration wells and depleted wells for the generation of geothermal heat and power can help in leapfrog with a drastic reduction in the cost of installation of geothermal plants and without job loss. This article provides learnings based on other country experiences related to the use of depleted wells for geothermal production. Available data from one of the gas reservoirs for three wells in Kailashtila gas field has been used to assess the potential. The simulation result shows that using existing wells as a geothermal heat source with heat pumps is not the best option for cooling only applications. Absorption chiller would be a better choice for heat-based cooling. However, a combination of seasonal cooling and heating with heat storage in geothermal wells during hot periods and heat utilization for space heating during cold periods presents a very attractive energy solution option. But more detailed systematic studies including detailed calculation of geothermal energy generation potential for Bangladesh with feasibility assessment can be conclusively done with site specific data access and are necessary to fully explore the technical and economic potential. © 2020 Published by RERIC in International Energy Journal (IEJ).