Bangladesh, the eighth largest populous country in the world, has a significant rural population (70%), which is contributing to the energy demand of the country. The major portion in energy demand of rural households is biomass energy. With the improvement in GDP the rural energy demand would switch to more electricity intensive demand pathway. This paper focuses on a bottom up approach towards modelling the aggregated energy demand of rural households of Bangladesh form the year 2010 to 2050. The combination of four level scenarios of four variables (population, GDP electrification index, public energy conservation index) would forecast lowest, highest and optimum energy demand pathways for rural households of Bangladesh. The study not only considers the electricity demand of the rural household, but also it would render the opportunity to concentrate at the detail user end energy demands (e.g. liquid fuel, biomass etc.)

According to the India Energy Security Scenario 2047, the number of residential air conditioner (A/C) units may increase seven-fold by 2037 as compared to 2017. Also, the related energy consumption might increase four times in the next two decades, according to India’s National Cooling Action Plan. Therefore, the study of occupant cooling behaviour is essential to reduce and manage the significant electricity demand, helping to formulate and implement climate-specific cooling policies, and to adopt low-energy and low-cost technologies at mass-market scale. The study aims to analyse residential electricity consumption in order to investigate occupant behaviour, especially for thermal comfort by using space cooling and mechanical ventilation technologies. Among the five climate zones in India, this study focuses on the occupant behaviour in a warm-humid climate using Auroville as a case study, where climate analysis of the past 30 years demonstrated progression towards unprecedented warmer weather in the last five years. In this study, electricity consumption data from 18 households (flats) were monitored for seven months (November 2018–June 2019). The study also elaborated the limitations faced while monitoring and proposed a data filling methodology to create a complete daily profile for analysing occupant behaviour through electricity consumption. The results of the data-driven approach demonstrated the characteristics and complexities in occupant behaviour and insight on the operation of different technologies to attain thermal comfort in residential buildings in an increasingly warming climate.

Bangladesh—recently graduated to developing nation category from a least developed country with an emerging economy also is one of the severely affected countries by climate change—is heading towards a coal-intensive electricity generation mix contrary to global decarbonisation efforts. It is facing formidable challenges in achieving universal access to affordable, reliable, and sustainable electricity, decarbonising the energy mix by 2030 to achieve the objective of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 7, despite a 285% increase of installed capacity between 2008–09 and 2020–21 and aiming at achieving 40 GW and 60 GW by 2030 and 2041 with planned expansions, respectively. This study reviewed Bangladesh’s electricity sector developments—demand, generation, transmission, and distribution (T&D)—to identify progress in policies, drivers, and challenges behind the Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions-intensive future direction. The rapid population and economic growth and shift towards industry-based economy drove the exponential growth in energy demand, eventually influencing the rapid generation capacity and T&D infrastructure development. However, Bangladesh has targeted transitioning from natural gas to coal dominating fuel mix due to the lower renewable potential, energy, and food security challenges, because of the anticipated substantial future electricity demand for becoming an Upper Middle and a High-income country by 2031 and 2041, respectively. We also recommended nuclear energy, (renewable) electricity import and floating solar plants to decarbonise the current trajectory.

Of the 33 global megacities, 10 were situated in South Asia. Extreme heat waves have become an annual phenomenon due to climate change in South Asian megacities, causing severe health issues and even deaths. In this study, we evaluated 29 years (1990–2019) of historical data on heat stress in ten selected megacities (existing and prospective)—New Delhi, Dhaka, Mumbai, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chittagong, and Pune—in India and Bangladesh. We used heat index (HI) and environmental stress index (ESI) analyses to evaluate stress and vulnerability. Our results showed New Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, and Chennai in India; Dhaka and Chittagong in Bangladesh were already experiencing an elevated number of hours of “danger” levels of heat stress, which may lead to heat cramps, exhaustion, stroke, and even death. Furthermore, the frequency of “danger” levels of heat stress and vulnerable levels of ESI has increased significantly since 2011 in the selected megacities, which elevated the heat-related vulnerability among the millions of inhabitants in terms of work hours lost for light, moderate, and heavy work due to heat stress. The vulnerable population in the studied megacities might have to reduce annual work hours by 0.25–860.6 h (light work), 43–1595.9 h (moderate work), and 291–2402 h (heavy work) due to extreme heat in 1990–2019. We also discussed the implication of the work-hour loss on productivity, income, gross domestic product, and sustainable development goal progress because of heat stress and its causes and suggested recommendations to reduce its impact.