Ghana has failed to meet is initial target of universal electricity access by 2020, the Executive Director of the Institute of Energy Security(IES), Paa Kwasi Anamua-Sakyi (Nana Amoasi VII) has said.
Also, the nation has failed to meet its 10% deployment of renewable energy by 2020.
According to Mr. Anamua-Sakyi, Ghana may be required to grow annual electricity access rate by at least 3% if it will be able to achieve a universal electricity access by the new set year 2025.
This will be in tandem with growth in demographic requirements, increased urbanization with an ever-increasing technological demand, increase in economic growth, and increase in development and industrial activities.
Currently, total electricity coverage or penetration in the country stands at 85%.
According to the IES don in a write-up ‘Ghana must deploy the renewables to achieve universal electricity access by 2025’, it is now time for Ghana to be religious on its policy goal of 100% national electricity using renewable energy as a catalyst, after continuously increasing power generation capacity from largely thermal sources.
“Deployment of renewable energy to achieve universal electricity access in Ghana is of course vital in the sense that a considerable proportion of the communities awaiting connection to the national electricity grid are currently difficult to access due to the fact that they are lakeside communities, with others planted on islands that require connection by sub-marine cables”, he pointed out.
“It has already been part of the country’s plan to develop and deploy renewable energy (RE) and energy efficiency technologies to achieve a 10 percent penetration of national electricity production by 2020. It is for this reason that in 2011 the Renewable Energy Act was enacted to provide for the development, management, utilization, sustainability and adequate supply of renewable energy for the generation of heat and power, and thereby increase the proportion of renewable energy in the national energy supply mix while contributing to the mitigation of climate change.”
The Energy Commission’s data shows that at end 2019 Ghana had only 1% penetration rate of electricity from renewable energy sources in its total generation mix.
Mr. Anamuah-Sakyi said 31 years after the establishment of a 30-year National Electrification Scheme (NES), there still exist a substantial deficit in electricity access in Ghana.
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