Dr. Yussif Sulemana, an Energy Strategist and Senior Oil Production Specialist, has intimated that, for the renewable energy goal to be achieved in Ghana, there have to be investments and an enabling environment also required to make it possible.
Speaking with the Vaultz Media, he posited that, Ghana’s failure to achieve its renewable energy goal boils down to the authorities not showing interest in it as well as not providing an enabling environment which in turn affects investments.
“”The main thing is that some investors are still willing but we are still much deep into the thermal generation mix, which is not the sustainable means. I mean this is not an infinite resource… which is bound to get finished up as time goes on. And so, when do we prepare for the future, apart from the cleanliness of green energy, I mean we have to realize that fossil fuels in the next five decades as scientists are saying may almost vanish. So are we going to be waiting till that time fossil fuels will vanish from the surface of the earth then we don’t know what to do?”
He added that, if the government is not able to put in any investment, it should at least be able to create an enabling environment by removing all the bureaucratic procedures that is required for people with licenses to build renewable energy projects in Ghana.
Touching on industrialization with regards to renewable energy, he said that, the renewable energy transition was not going to be done in a day or two and therefore the need for a systematic transition.
“So, for sure with industrialization, we still need our fossil fuel, that is the non-renewables. They are still critical. In fact globally, it’s not only Ghana, fossil fuel is critical to industrialization… but what we are saying is that, as we know this is critical, we must make frantic effort to go through the transition process. But that’s not our worry, the worry is that we are not seeing much efforts that are being made to go through this transition. “
He further said that, apart from the profitability, the nation must also look at the sustainability of renewable energy
“Fossil fuels, will not be there with us forever and so as much as we want to industrialize, we shouldn’t industrialize to the detriment of our health, we shouldn’t industrialize to the detriment of our climate degradation. We need to also commit ourselves to the energy transition process, because eventually, fossil fuel will go, what will happen? Are we prepared?”
He then urged for efforts to be made to transition to renewable adding that, the reason why mostly the investors are not so enthused about green energy project is the fact that the investment return time is longer and requires heavy upfront capital input.
“If you look at the fossil fuel, if you invest in fossil fuel you can break even within some period of time but for renewable as we talk now on mega scale basis, I am talking about industrial scale basis, it takes time to get the investment back. So, the aggregate of all these factors where the return of investment for renewables is not as easy as that of non-renewables is all putting pressure on that. Regardless, we have to make effort to transition because it is inevitable.”
