The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), Sustainable Energy Forum which seeks to promote exchange of ideas and cooperation to support the acceleration of sustainable solutions for the region’s energy situation has been held in Accra.
Speaking at the 3rd Ecowas Sustainable the Minister of Energy, John Peter Amewu thanked the Ecowas Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency (ECREEE) for their immense support to Ghana in the development of the necessary policies and regulations aimed at promoting Renewable Energy and Efficiency in Ghana.
According to him, Ghana enacted a Renewable Energy Act which seeks to create the enabling environment for attracting private sector investment in renewable energy.
“The result has been an influx of interest by the private sector in the integration of utility scale Renewable Energy. As much as 17 PPAs have been signed by the main Distribution Utility to the tune of 2,260MW when current peak demand is only 2,500MW” he noted.
Mr. Peter Amewu said the rapid drop in the prize of Renewable Energy systems, particular solar has also necessitated the need to transition from the Feed-in-Tariff Scheme to Competitive Bidding Schemes the public auctions scheme particularly for the PPAs that have not reach financial close.
“The government of Ghana will deploy in additional, 55 mini-grids, 35,000 solar home systems and one million solar lanterns in very hard to reach communities (mainly islands and lakeside communities) where grid electricity cannot be extended within the next 5 years”.
In his remarks, the Executive Director of ECREEE, Mr. Mahama Kappiah, said that there are currently, less than 600 clean energy mini-grid which are operational.
This he stated falls far short of the regional target of 60,000 clean energy mini-grids.
He hinted that in terms of the share of renewable energy in the overall electricity mix, ECREEE are currently at 26% including large hydro.
“We are still short of the 35% target by 2020 and 48% by 2030. However, we have some good news. we have over 1 gigawatts of renewable energy projects scheduled to be commissioned within the next 2 years” he stressed.
This third edition of ESEF will enable ECOWAS member states up to their commitments.
Story by Stephen Kojo Tetteh
