By Adeniyi Adeoloye
Ghana’s update of its 2019 Renewable Energy Master Plan (REMP) to the Renewable Energy Master Plan 2026 – 2030 demonstrates a renewed commitment to expanding renewable energy deployment, particularly as the successful implementation would move Ghana closer to achieving its energy and climate goals.
The 2019 plan aimed to “increase the proportion of renewable energy in the national energy generation mix from 42.5 MW in 2015 to 1,363.63 MW (with grid connected systems totalling 1,094.63 MW)”. It also sought to “reduce the dependence on biomass as main fuel for thermal energy applications”. It also set out to “provide renewable energy-based decentralised electrification options in 1,000 off-grid communities” and “promote local content and local participation in the renewable energy industry”.
The 2019 plan was designed for implementation over a 12-year period, beginning in 2019 and ending in 2030, through three implementation cycles. The first cycle, intended to serve as the transition phase, was to run between 2019 and 2020, while the remaining two cycles covered the periods 2021 – 2025 and 2026 – 2030, respectively.
Under the 2019 plan, renewable energy deployment spanned solar, wind, biomass and hydropower technologies in different use cases, such as lighting, irrigation, and other industrial and residential applications.
The overarching goal of the updated plan remains the same.
The implementation record of the 2019 plan provides a useful basis for assessing how attainable the new plan is. The question, then, is what has changed since 2019, and how much of the targets in the updated plan can realistically be achieved by its 2030 end date?
The update is not an afterthought. The 2019 REMP made it clear that each execution cycle would be “reviewed in the last year of implementation and the outcome used to improve the implementation of the next cycle”.
The REMP 2026 – 2030 plan is informed by the 2019 REMP “and reflects lessons learned, evolving national priorities, and emerging global trends”.
The test case for the 2019 plan in this piece is limited to solar and wind deployment. Given the two technologies are at the core of the REMP’s ambition to scale the contribution of renewables to the grid.
The updated plan provides a scorecard of the implementation so far. The first two-implementation cycles of the 2019 plan recorded relative success in interventions targeted at household levels, such as biomass cook stoves, but the same cannot be said for utility-scale solar and wind systems. By the end of second implementation cycle, the target was for utility-scale solar deployment to reach 347.5MWp (Mega Watt-peak). However, actual deployment stood at 183.1MWp representing 53% of the target.
While progress in utility-scale solar is behind, the plan has recorded stronger performance in distributed solar photovoltaic (solar power systems installed on rooftops of homes, commercial, industrial, and institutional buildings at or near the point where the electricity is consumed). Deployment in this case reached 86MWp against a target of 100MWp capacity, marking an 86% progress.
The target of 275MWp for utility-scale wind at the end of 2025 implementation cycle recorded no progress with actual deployment at 0%.
The updated plan has a new target for utility-scale solar and wind. With utility-scale solar and wind targets of 852MWp and 709MWp respectively for the 2026 – 2030 implementation cycle requiring estimated investments of $631Million and $999Million, the updated plan without doubt is ambitious. The question now is whether the updated plan is yet another exercise where ambitious targets will outpace actual deployment, or whether the lessons learned from the first seven years of implementation can provide the springboard to achieve these new targets. The investment required to achieve the 2026 -2030 targets makes this highly unlikely.
For instance, the 2019 REMP projected a total investment requirement of $5.6Billion over its entire implementation period. The updated plan now estimates an investment requirement of $10.8Billion for the 2026 -2030 implementation cycle alone. With the investment requirement for the final implementation cycle now almost double the amount envisaged for the entire plan in 2019, what is the likelihood of mobilising this additional capital, when financing was already a constraint during earlier implementation cycles?
While financing and technical constraints was identified as impediments to the implementation of the 2019 plan, because of its dependency on private capital and donor support over which Ghana has limited control, the country has not made much progress on areas that are firmly within its control – the establishment and operationalization of necessary institutions. The promise of the establishment of the Renewable Energy Authority from the 2019 plan is still a work in progress. The absence of this agency has been attributed to the non-operationalisation of the Renewable Energy Fund. The goal of the Fund “is to provide financial resources for the promotion, development, and sustainable management and utilisation of renewable energy sources”. Similarly, a REMP Coordinating Unit is still yet to be created. The updated plan attributes this “to lack of clarity on its positioning and leadership — whether it was to be situated within the MoEn> [Ministry of Energy and Green Transition] or the Energy Commission”. This in turn hindered the operationalisation of the monitoring, evaluation, and learning framework, thereby creating gaps in data gathering and reporting during the preparation of the updated plan, as noted in REMP 2026 – 2030.
The evidence from Ghana’s updated REMP 2026 -2030 presents a mixed picture. Success has been recorded in distributed solar, while utility-scale scale solar has made measurable progress. In contrast, utility-scale wind is yet to take flight, raising questions about the feasibility of achieving the new target of 709MWp during the final implementation cycle spanning 2026 – 2030. Progress on establishing institutions required to drive the implementation has also been slow, underscoring the urgency attached to achieving the plan’s objectives.
The updated plan will therefore be tested by whether the lessons learned translate to accelerated deployment of planned technologies, or whether the targets will again outpace implementation. Ultimately, the final implementation cycle will reveal whether the story of the Renewable Energy Master Plan 2026 – 2030 is one of failing forward, or repeating old promises.
Adeniyi Adeoloye, a petroleum geoscientist based in Calgary, is in a postgraduate course on Energy Management at the University of Calgary. An editorial associate of Africa Oil+Gas Report, Adeoloye writes from time to time for this platform and can be reached at adeniyi@africaoilgasreport.com.
