Ghana’s Drive for Gas Power Calls Commitment to Renewables into Question

Innocent K. Agbelie and Simon Bawakyillenuo from the University of Ghana ISSER write on the Ghanaian government’s gas policy and renewables development. This article was originally posted at urbanafrica.com.

From 2012 to the beginning of 2016, the Government of Ghana has been stretched to the limit due to the existing power supply infrastructure’s inability to provide constant and reliable electricity for domestic and industrial activities. This has resulted in the acute electricity supply load shedding known as ‘Dumsor’.

Ghana’s electricity supply market currently has an estimated 10 to 15 percent year-on-year demand growth rate, underpinned by increasing domestic and industrial demand. Prominent among the actions taken by government to placate highly agitated power consumers is the expansion of thermal plant facilities, which are powered by gas imported from Nigeria and also from the Atuabo Gas plant in Jomoro District in the Western Region of Ghana. Since 2000 the share of thermal plants in the total national installed capacity has been on the rise, contrary to the country’s avowed green economic development pathway. This share (computed from the difference between the total national installed capacity and total hydropower installed capacity as reported by the Energy Commission,2014 and 2015) went up from 16.8% in 2000 to 31.8% and 44.1% in 2005 and 2014 respectively.

In contrast, the total installed new renewables’ capacity is a woeful 0.1% of the national total power installed capacity in 2014, while the share of hydro-power installed capacity declined from 83.2% in 2000 to 55.8% in 2014. The increasing share of thermal power generation sources will increase Ghana’s carbon emissions, accelerating climate change and the associated extreme events.

According to the Minister of Energy and Petroleum, the Government of Ghana wants to ensure that the nation becomes self-sufficient in its energy supply. Accordingly, government intends to increase the share of thermal generation capacity to 80% in the total national installed power generation capacity in the next 10 years. These thermal plants, according to the Minster, will be powered by the cheapest source of fuel: gas. This pronouncement sadly evokes lots more questions than answers in the minds of many, including: “What is the future of renewable energy development in the next decade as it is uncertain what the remaining 20% of the installed generation capacity will constitute?”, “What will be the effect of having 80% thermal plants on Ghana’s carbon footprint in the next decade and beyond?”, “Does a cheap fuel source necessarily guarantee a clean fuel source?”

These and many other questions should prompt a rethink in the nation’s quest to become self-sufficient in not just energy, but clean and sustainable energy in the next decade.

Ghana’s 2010 National Energy Policy sets a target of 10% of total energy production from renewable energy sources by 2020. This will require an installed renewable energy generation capacity of 450MW. Although the target is backed by the Renewable Energy Act 2011 it is highly unachievable since the present total installedrenewable energy capacity as of 2014 is 2.5 MW representing 0.1% of the total national installed generation capacity.

Taking into account government’s pronouncement of increasing thermal share to 80% in ten years’ time, the future of the already unachievable renewable energy target is even more questionable. The thermally oriented energy mix projections into the future calls into question the sustainable development and green economy agenda of the country, given that Ghana is signatory to many international conventions and protocols that incorporate sustainability issues.

According to estimates by Ghana’s Environmental Protection Agency, the country’s annual greenhouse gas emissions have been on the rise, growing from 10 Mt CO2e in 1991 to 34 Mt CO2e in 2012. The bulk contributors to these emissions are the Energy, Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use (AFOLU) sectors. The country’s Third National Communication Report to the UNFCCC highlights that Ghana’s emission rate has grown significantly over the past two decades and contributes 33.66 Mt CO2e to global GHG emissions. With a projection of thermal plants making up 80% of the energy mix in the next 10 years, Ghana’s emissions are bound to increase significantly in direct contrast to the Policy Programme area of minimizing GHG emissions as outlined in the 2013 Ghana National Climate Change Policy.

Cheap-fuel thermal plants appear rather costly to the national and global environment in the medium to long-term. A more sustainable approach is required through commitment to policy strategies coupled with political will on the part of leaders, to take bold decisions in order to drive the renewable energy agenda just like they are doing on the thermal agenda. The fact is, the formulation of policies by policy makers are inadequate for a sustainable energy transition if practical actions are not taken to implement them. Civil society groups, research and advocacy organisations also need to put pressure on government so that it accomplishes its pronounced targets for renewable energy generation.

Rivers, Technology and Society – Dipak Gyawali at the LCEDN Conference, Durham, 23rd – 24th March 2015

Simon Batchelor from Gamos writes on the relevance of Dipak Gyawali’s talk at the 4th LCEDN Conference to the SAMSET project.

I attended an interesting talk by Dipak Gyawali (Interdisciplinary Analysts, Nepal) at the LCEDN 4th Conference, Durham March 23rd and 24th 2015.  Dipak has been both minister of water and minister of energy for the government of Nepal in the past.  Now an academic studying and discussing the water, energy, food nexus, he is best known for his book Rivers, Technology and Society.  He raised a number of points in his talk that seemed particularly relevant to SAMSET.

Nepal is a country with great potential for hydro power and yet it has only 750MW and in recent years is having daily load shedding on 15 hours.  He focused on how long it takes to build a hydro dam, and the complexities of the ecosystem, the role of activists, and the conditionality of the loans.  Indeed he told the story of how he was involved in challenging the bad economics of the World Bank, arguing against a particular dam not from an environmental point of view (against which the World Bank would argue they would mitigate the environment effects, and then 15 years later we would all see that the mitigation didn’t work) but using economics to argue against the massive investment and delayed outcomes – bad economics was a convincing argument.

But arguing against something is not the way forward for a country.  So Dipak gave us some very concrete examples of possible ways forward.  He talked about the emerging role of decentralised electricity, which takes so much less time to plan and implement.  He noted that in addition to the 750MW national grid, there is also 750MW of Diesel (and Petrol) generators, being run by retail outlets, shopping centres and homes!  Where the grid costs 7 to 8 rupees per kWh, the people who feel they need control of their own electric destiny are paying between 30 to 80 rupees for their diesel generation.  This indicates a massive willingness to pay – if it is attached to reliability.  And Dipak pointed out that from first discussions to actual switching on in 2011, the 750Mw of hydro took more than 70 years; the 750MW of diesel has been thought of and switched on in the last 10 years.

“Kaligandaki Hydro” by Krish Dulal – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kaligandaki_Hydro.jpg#/media/File:Kaligandaki_Hydro.jpg

So how can we leverage this willingness to pay and this idea of decentralised but reliable electricity?  Of course his example is of carbon based diesel; it would be good if the decentralised reliable energy could come from clean energy.  In Nepal, there are regulatory difficulties in connecting renewables to the grid.  There are 46MW of solar PVs in the country, and studies quoted by Dipak suggest that with a reasonable and a more bureaucratic light feed in tariff, people would install 250MW within 6 months.  His views from Nepal illustrate how ‘business as usual’ can lead to a strange energy landscape, with people paying more than necessary for their energy when a change in policy and regulatory framework could rapidly change the scene.

He also talked about alternative models for funding smaller responses.  Small hydro has not really been very cost effective and yet stepping out of the box and looking at it from different angle can completely change that.  He talked about hydro and transport, and I confess that I thought ‘How is that possible?, how can you link hydro and transport?’.  In Nepal people carry items up mountains by foot, and it can take five hours or more to get goods up to a village. Ropeways can offer an electric pulley transport system. Connecting a hydro to a ropeway can make the hydro economically justifiable, working on the ropeway during the day and then its use for lighting in the evening for the community doesn’t even need to be charged.

In SAMSET we have noted the difference between South African municipalities who buy electricity wholesale and are responsible for and gain revenue from distribution, and Uganda and Ghana where municipalities don’t have such responsibility.  In Nepal, Dipak introduced communitisation of electricity, where communities were enabled to mobilise to purchase electricity wholesale and take responsibility for distribution.  Some 250 communities operate in this way now, and theft of electricity has dropped to zero (since the wholesale has to match the distribution and any community member attempting theft is soon identified and sanctioned).

Interestingly at this point Dipak spent some time on the political economy, noting that almost all sides of the political spectrum do not like the communitisation idea.  The Maoists were said to not like it because it wasn’t through the party system, and the far right didn’t like it because they liked to gift things to the people, in order to get their political support – the communitisation empowered the people outside the patronage system.  Dipak also mentioned that the centralists were lobbied by vested interested to not explore these interesting alternative models!

It was a very interesting talk.  I cannot guarantee I have remembered everything accurately, and numbers may be slightly off, but I felt particularly his focus on decentralised reliable energy, and the willingness of people to pay for reliability, was relevant to all our SAMSET locations.