Participants in renewable energy and efficiency have called for deeper consultation on Ghana’s national energy transition framework to avoid dire financial consequences on local economies.

For them, energy transition was important as the whole world was moving towards that and Ghana could not be left out, however, there were a lot of implications in the quest to move towards cleaner energy.

In a day’s youth participation in energy transition and domestic resources mobilisation workshop organised by the Strategic Youth Network Development (SYND), they indicated that the energy transition model used by developed countries could not be used for African countries that were still struggling to grow.

Dr Robert Bright Mawuko Sogbadji, leading expert in Nuclear physics and renewable energy explained that Ghana’s National Energy Framework seeks to minimise energy related indoor air pollution and its related illnesses but Ghana was reliant on the oil and gas industry and that if we say we were going to hastily transition, it meant that we were going to lose out on revenue.

For instance, he said Ghana raked in $1.6 billion from petroleum revenue in 2022 and, therefore, any rush in energy transition would create financial loss to the country.

He said it was important for all countries in Africa to strive to achieve energy access because failure to do so would affect sustainable development.

In doing so, he said efforts must be made to put in place improved infrastructure along the value chain from generation to distribution.

Dr Sogbadji also said that even as African countries strived for the right financing for sustainable energy transition, there must be the political will to push through policies that would help to achieve net zero.

“The various governments must also ensure that there is ease of doing business, aside from implementing policies that will attract private capital,” she added.

Denis Gyeyir, Senior Programmes of Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI) said the energy sector was one of the high emitting sectors which was key if Ghana was to achieve its net zero ambitions.

This, he said, would have a significant impact on women and children who are the main gatherers of firewood.

However, he said limitations such as challenging investment climate, uncertainty of available resources, limited technology capacity, insufficient experience in renewable energy development, human and socio-economic challenges and information gap were some barriers to renewable energy development in the country.

He called for an information labelling to display information to be available to customers to help encourage energy efficiency in the country.
BY BENEDICTA GYIMAAH FOLLEY