The largest single Project benefit is its contribution to addressing Bangladesh’s energy and power needs.

Although Bangladesh has made a good progress to increase its installed power generation capacity but still is putting efforts to ensure reliable and quality supply of electricity at affordable price. Lack of reliable low cost power is a barrier to the development of industry and also impedes agricultural production. It is widely accepted that the availability of reliable low cost electricity is a necessary condition for sustainable economic and human development. For countries such as Bangladesh, which have relatively low per capita electricity consumption, small increases in electricity consumption are associated with substantial improvements in education, life expectancy and levels of income. The Government of Bangladesh has prioritised the increase in electricity availability as key to achieving many of its objectives including poverty alleviation and the Millennium Development Goals.

Bangladesh's current generating capacity is largely (over 50%) fuelled by natural gas, which is rapidly being depleted. In contrast, Bangladesh has substantial reserves of high quality coal and this provides the fastest, lowest risk and most reliable means of delivering a step change in electricity availability for the people of Bangladesh. At full production, coal mined at Phulbari could support generating capacity of 6,000MW, compared to current installed capacity of 21,239 MW (December 2020). The mine production would also provide long term supply stability and coal quality assurance for power plants and power generation based on Phulbari coal would deliver lower cost coal-fired electricity tariff than for imported coal.