Energy Commission targets 10% integration of renewable energy into national mix by 2030

The Energy Commission is targeting a 10 percent integration of renewable energy into the national mix by the year 2030.

According to the commission, though the adoption of renewable energy was gradually being integrated into households and commercial entities, strategies were being put in place to scale up the integration.

Deputy Director in charge of Renewable Energy at the Energy Commission, Frederick Ken Appiah made this known at the launch of this year’s Renewable Energy Challenge for Senior High Schools in the Ashanti Region.

The Commission as part of its Renewable Energy Challenge is partnering with the Ghana Education Service to develop the research skills of Senior High School students and promote technological innovation in renewable energy and energy efficiency.

Ten Senior High Schools Participated in this year’s Challenge in the Ashanti Region and were tasked to develop renewable energy technology to improve efficiency in the Agric sector.

“Renewable energy is gradually being integrated into our homes and the national mix. A few years down the line, we used to be less than one percent integrated into the national energy-electricity mix, but now we have moved to three percent and the target is that by 2030 we should move to 10 percent. I am talking about modern forms of renewable energy such as solar, wind, biomass and mini hydro,” Mr Appiah stated.

He said they were poised to promote small-scale and medium-scale renewable energy resources or technologies by integrating or having almost 10 percent by 2030.

“It is part of our nationally determined contribution that we have submitted and committed ourselves to internationally as part of the climate agenda that each country must contribute to,” he added.

Mr Appiah again said that the commission had also developed a mechanism of capturing certain information, “that is how come we are able to tell that it is about three percent.”

Ashanti Regional Director of the Ghana Education Service (GES), Dr William Kwame Amankra said that going forward the initiative will have more students on board including basic school pupils in order to enhance the impacts.

“Once it is a students-based programme, you come in here you learn what other people are doing and that is what I term as peer teaching. Going forward we will have more schools and even basic schools having this.”

“At the end of the day we don’t want just the just a few to do it but a large number of them so that it will have lots of impacts,” he stated.