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Political parties outline visions on energy

  • SOURCE: | qwesa2big
  • political-parties

    Three political parties that will be contesting this year’s general election have outlined their visions for the country’s energy sector when voted into power at the 5th West African Clean Energy and Environment Exhibition and Conference (WACEE).

    The three parties which included the largest opposition party, the New Patriotic Party (NPP), the Progressive People’s Party (PPP) and the National Democratic Party (NDP), all proposed the usage of renewable energy as a major source of power in the country.

    The Policy Advisor of the NPP, Mr Boakye Agyarko, said it was expedient for the country to consider generating power from alternative sources.

    “We should begin shifting our attention to renewable energies to meet our power demand,” he said.

    Renewable energy

    He pointed out that the cheapest power was “the one which you do not have to produce and that brings us to renewable energy”.

    He said the country was fortunate to have sunlight available throughout the year, but somehow finds a way not to utilise it.

    “We are being drowned in filth and while some people are turning this into energy and money, we are making it drive us out of town. The solution to our energy problems is to turn to renewables such as solar, wind and waste to energy”.

    Mr Agyarko said the NPP, when voted into power, would create an energy-efficient economy to power the national development agenda.

    He said with demand for power growing at 12 per cent annually on the average, the country needed to produce a minimum of 5000 megawatts of power within the next 10 years in order to be in the league of middle-income countries in terms of energy sufficiency.

    He said there were easier things that could be done to improve the energy efficiency and intensity such as tackling transmission losses.

    “About 27 per cent of all power generated by the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) is lost and cannot be accounted for. If the ECG gets 1,800 megawatts of power and loses about 27 per cent of it, that is a huge chunk like the size of the Akosombo Dam that is missing from our energy output,” he stated.

    Diversifying energy supply

    The Flag bearer of the NDP, Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings, also added that diversifying the country’s energy supply to include renewable energy technologies at the district levels was the way to go.

    She said the NDP would design an integrated system of renewable energy technology to power districts, create awareness of the technology, as well as facilitate ownership of the opportunities at the community level.

    Flexibility in sources of energy

    A member of the PPP’s National Committee, Mr Ladi Nylander, said the party, when voted into power, would ensure there was flexibility in the sources of energy.

    He said this would mean the adoption of renewable energy as another source of energy, adding that it was targeting at least 10 per cent of the country’s energy capacity from renewable energy in the near future.

    According to him, job creation was the hallmark of everything it does and would, therefore, develop an energy policy that would propel development.

    Source: http://www.graphic.com.gh/news/politics/political-parties-outline-visions-on-energy.html

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