By John Ikani
Ghana’s Deputy Minister of Energy, Dr Mohammed Amin Adam, says the West African nation is exploring homegrown options for energy transition from fossil fuels to renewables.
Dr Adam made this known while speaking to the media at the launch of the 2019 Ghana Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (GHEITI) reports in Accra on Thursday.
According to him, one of the measures put in place to ensure seamless energy transition was the setting up of a National Energy Transition Committee (NETC) with the aim of developing a national energy transition policy.
He went on to note that the set up of the committee was important to drive the nation’s transition policy and strategy at a comfortable pace.
“it’s important that we transition at our own pace because it is like we are being rushed into it.
“Most of the developed countries who have benefited from fossil fuel have developed their countries based on the natural resources,” he said.
In Ghana’s case, he said oil was discovered in commercial quantities a few years ago and the country was being encouraged to transition to renewables.
“It took the world over 75 years to move from coal energy to fossil fuel yet we are being encouraged to take just 30 years to move to clean energy,” he said.
Dr Adam stated that the country would continue to produce oil and gas because it needs revenue to support its developmental agenda
As a result, he said the government would deploy mitigation programmes such as planting of trees and adherence to zero fleeing policy for gas.
“These are some of the measures we think we can implement to reduce our mitigation but at the same time continue to produce our natural resources,” he said.
