200 young marchers, one big field: Bangladesh opens its festival for a fairer, cleaner energy future

Bangladesh still gets 96% of its electricity-making capacity from fossil fuels — solar, wind and water together make up just 3.63%. Today in Dhaka, the people working to change that filled a university field instead. The second Renewable Energy Fest opened at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (Buet), three days where young people, researchers, inventors and investors meet face to face. It began with about 200 young marchers walking from the Shaheed Minar under one banner: “Power to the People.” Inside, an Innovation Fair and a marketplace will try to match bright clean-energy ideas with the money to build them — and new government policy, including a goal of 10,000 megawatts of solar by 2030, gives them something real to aim at.

SDG 7 · Affordable and clean energy — Mechanism: community action