AfrElec: Deputy minister says Ghana must take cautious approach to energy transition

Accra should not adopt decarbonisation policies so strict that they limit options for the development of Ghana’s hydrocarbon resources, Deputy Energy Minister Andrew Egyapa Mercer said on March 1. 

Speaking at a town hall event in Takoradi, he declared that Ghana risked seeing its crude oil and natural gas assets becoming stranded if it took an overly rigid approach to reducing carbon dioxide emissions. While climate change poses a genuine risk to the world, Mercer said, Accra cannot ignore the possibility that emissions reduction policies may harm the national economy.

“The objectives of a National Energy Transition Plan should ... take into consideration the peculiar circumstances of Ghana’s abundant natural resources and her development needs, as articulated by President [Nana] Akufo-Addo in Glasgow, Scotland during the COP26 conference,” he said, referring to the event held last autumn.

The deputy minister also emphasised that Africa was currently the smallest source of carbon dioxide emissions in the world, on a continental scale, and called for the energy transition to be a fair process for low-, middle- and high-income countries alike.

“[It] would be wholly unfair for the world to demand that Africa abandons the exploitation of our resources needed to finance her development and help us to cope better with the threat of climate change, at a time when many countries on the continent have just discovered them,” Mercer commented.