Energy Strategist and expert, Dr Yussif Sulemana has intimated that, the President’s promise of providing electricity to all part of the nation, must be affordable, dependable and available.
Speaking in an interview with the Vaultz Media on the attainability of the promise by the President, he stated that, the project is highly achievable, if the President considers making it affordable.
“It is a promise I wish the President had framed as affordable electricity to all. So, even if electricity is available and it is not consumable, in order words if it is very expensive, people will not consume it and that will not mean availability and affordability.”
His comment comes on the back of President, Nana Addo Dankwa-Akufo Addo, promising to provide electricity to all parts of the country in his second term, during his inaugural speech.
Additionally, Dr. Sulemana revealed that, Ghana has the potential power generation capacity of over 5000 Megawatts and lamented as to why our electricity is still expensive.
He averred that, for the President to be able to achieve his promise of providing electricity in all parts of the country, he has to consider making it affordable, dependable and available, adding that, if these three parameters are factored, electricity will be easily penetrated into the country.
He also stated that, should the nation change its method of operations within the country’s electricity and energy generation sector, things will fall in place.
He highlighted on the fact that, the nation’s generation mix is the reason for the prolonged nature of the project which has not come to its full attainability.
“Our major source of generating electricity or much of the generation mix comes from very expensive raw materials or very expensive sources. We cannot continue to import liquid-based fuel, for instance, we cannot import, crude oil, light crude oil to generate power and expect the power to be cheaper. It cannot be.”
Additionally, he averred the fact, the nation cannot be expectant of a cheaper electricity, if material imports are constantly being done.
He further said until the nation gravitates fully from the use of gaseous materials to generate power, it can never be affordable and the nation cannot be expectant of power penetration throughout the country.
On the provision of a roadmap to help in the attainability of the provision of electricity to all, he advised that, the nation moves from the use of heavy fuel used in power generation to gas.
“… and the thing is, we have huge gas reserves within our shores, our fields can potentially generate about trillions of cubic feet of gas. The TEN fields, the ENI fields, the Jubilee fields, all these fields have a lot of gases.
“If we are able to harness these gases, send it through Ghana Gas, and then we are able to ensure that, we send this processed gas to all the utilities, all power generating points, that’s the way to go.”
He then stated that, these gases are environmentally unfriendly and as such there must be shift.
