The incoming New Patriotic Party (NPP) administration needs to look for sustainable sources of funding for Ghana’s growing power needs, the African Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP) has said.
Ghana’s current power deficit is estimated between 150 and 250MW, a situation, analysts say will not sustain the country’s growing energy demands.
To overcome this challenge, ACEP is proposing that the NPP administration comes up with a realistic system that will get the country the needed power in order to not plunge the nation back into an energy crisis.
ACEP has projected that demand for power in 2017 will be around 2400 MW, given the Energy Commission’s estimation that demand for power grows at 10 percent annually.
Speaking to Citi News, the Head of Policy at ACEP, Dr. Ishmael Ackah noted that, “if demand is 1008, what it means is that maybe some companies that were off, like cold stores that collapsed during the load shedding, are not up now so if they start operating, what will happen?”
“So I think that the situation is fragile and there is no time for partying. We should look at getting a sustainable source of funding for our fuel,” he said.
Dr. Ackah indicated that the ideal power situation should see measures introduced to meet the projected demand of 2400 MW in addition to an excess capacity of 25 percent.
“If we are going to invest in a regasification plant so that we can even import LNG (liquefied Natural Gas) from Equatorial Guinea and some of these things, we should come out with measures that will at least get us the demand of 2400 and an excess capacity of about 25 percent so that when a machine is down, we can just bring in another machine to solve the problem.”
–
By: Delali Adogla-Bessa/citifmonline.com/Ghana