Even though there have been a lot of calls for Ghana to switch to renewable energy as soon as possible, not everybody thinks it is going to be achieved in the short to medium term.
The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Energy and Natural Resources, Prof Elvis Asare-Bediako is one of such people. He believes it should be a slow process for Ghana to switch to the use of renewable energy any time soon because of the cost and other requirements involved.
He spoke to Citi Business News.
“This kind of transitioning [to renewable energy] should be slow. It’s not going to be easy. Investment in solar energy is capital intensive. It’s not going to come suddenly. Currently, even China is still using coal and a greater percentage of the energy sources is from coal even though they are working towards moving away from that. We should see this as a slow process and not rush.”
The University of Energy and Natural Resources is a public institution that seeks to provide leadership and management of energy and natural resources.
Prof Asare-Bediako further highlighted the importance of partnership between his outfit and policymakers in achieving the long term goal of using renewable energy in Ghana.
“We need to have something unique for the country. If it’s solar, you need to adapt it to our current environment because if you just go and bring in solar from anywhere, our environment might just not be consistent with it. You may not get the output that you want. But when academia and the industry work together then we’ll be able to research and come out with the one which best fits our system.”
Ghana like other countries in the region is embarking on the use of renewable energy because of problems it has in accessing clean energy.
So far, Ghana has to meet its target of 10 percent deployment of renewable energy by 2020.
But according to the Bui Power Authority, Ghana is on course to attain its new goal of a 10 percent renewable energy in the country’s energy mix by 2030.
The CEO of the Authority, Fred Oware had earlier indicated that with the rate of power being generated at the Bui Power Solar plant, he was confident that the country would meet its new target.
To achieve this quickly, the Bui Power Authority has announced plans to construct 8 power plants with a total capacity of 259 MWp in the north of the country by 2022.