The Chief Executive Officer of Volta River Authority (VRA), Ghana’s largest state power generation company, Ing. Emmanuel Antwi-Darkwa, has underscored the need for the country’s Ministry of Energy to revisit policy directives in the industry to ensure energy efficiency and sustainability in pandemic situations in the future.
In a speech to mark the 4th Ghana Energy Awards in Accra on October 30, 2020, themed: ‘Excelling in Crisis: The Energy Sector in a Covid-19 era’, he urged the sector ministry to laisse with captains of the industry to come out with a pragmatic, prudent and a more efficient and sustainable energy policy directive and initiatives not to catch the country off-guard during future events such as the Covid-19.
“From policy perspective, I will like to remind the Minister what Covid-19 has done. It has created an opportunity for us to revisit our energy conservation and efficiency perspective. Consumers, who as a result of Covid-19 have less disposable income, are the right candidates to embrace energy conservation,” Ing. Antwi-Darkwa advised.
According him, the West African country needs to swiftly take advantage of the COVD-19 situation now and re-write the energy situation to safeguard the resource availability for domestic and industry use in future pandemics.
Though Ghana, VRA and other institutions in the energy and water supply-chain services have been able to sustain their mandates in this critical era, the VRA boss was of the view that, they need support to even perform per-excellence in future.
“Mr Minister, Covid-19 underscores the need to support electricity and water to our health and critical services,” he noted.
This, he said, would help such institutions to come in handy to help in future pandemic situations.
Touching on revenue generation for VRA in this Covid era, Ing. Antwi-Darkwa lamented, “There was one thing that unsurprisingly materialised.
“So as we speak, the ECG, NEDCO and ourselves continue to find ways to insentivise consumers who genuinely have difficulties to pay for electricity.”
He suggested to the government, as the last option, to consider assisting the utilities sector providers to ensure their efficiency and sustainability.
Commenting on the windfall that Covid-19 brought, he stated that it offered businesses innovative ways of operation, refocus on safety and health needs of employees and fully embracing the digital age.
While commending the government for proving free electricity and water to cushion all Ghanaians, the VRA boss acknowledged that, it is early days yet to fully assess the full impact of the pandemic.
In his remarks, the Special Guest of Honor, who also chaired the function, His Royal Majesty, Akwamuhene in the Eastern part of Ghana, Odeneho Kwafo Akoto III, also challenged the country to, as a matter of urgency, explore other renewable energy sources to augment its energy needs.
He specifically mentioned thermal and solar to produce inexpensive sources of energy to help the speedy development of the Ghanaian economy.
Odeneho Kwafo Akoto III was of the opinion that should Ghana take full advantage of the numerous renewable energy sources, the country will have energy sufficiency and sustainability would not be a major concern in the future.
He commended nominees and awardees of this year and urged other energy industrial stakeholders to strengthen their roles to fast-track the West African nation’s socioeconomic drive.