The Netherlands Ambassador to Ghana, Jeroen Verheul, has called for public-private collaboration to help provide funding to accelerate green transition in the country.
According to him, replacing fossil fuel electricity generation with renewable energy would be too expensive now – but it is steadily getting cheaper.
Ambassador Verheul said the Netherlands government is interested in promoting partnerships which seek to drive the agenda of doing away with energy that results in polluting the environment, like fossil fuel, but focus on pushing for renewable energy.
“It is not a collaboration between countries but collaboration that is a public-private partnerships, and the Netherlands is mainly focused on promoting public-private cooperation in order to turn electricity generation into something that is not contributing to pollution.
“This is a major funding challenge for governments that can be leveraged by public-private partnerships to accelerate the green transition,” he said during the maiden edition of the Environmental Sustainability Summit (ESS) organised by the B&FT.
In this regard, Ambassador Verheul thinks development partners can contribute to the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy by setting up financing and social schemes through private-partnership collaboration to help domestic consumers benefit as well.
He said if Ghana can consider generating electricity from renewable energies such as solar and wind, then the Netherlands will be ready to provide support for its progress.
Ambassador Verheul stressed on need for the country to tap into its renewable energies that are available rather than importing fossil fuels.
“Ghana, as a developing economy, spends a greater proportion of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) – nearly 27 percent of the country’s total export earnings – on importing fossil fuels to the detriment/wastage of abundant low-carbon energy resources such as renewables at the country’s disposal,” he said.
To him, although the cost of renewable energy is very expensive there has been a lot of research work done – and all prove that the economic benefit of renewable energy far outweighs the cost, hence the need to invest into it.
Supporting why renewables remain the cornerstone of global energy transition, he said: “Globally, about US$29trillion is needed to scrap coal. The benefits, however, are calculated at around US$107trillion (up till 2100), leaving a net benefit of US$78 trillion – equivalent to 1.2 percent of global output per year”.
About Environmental Sustainability Summit
The Business and Financial Times, through its Environmental Sustainability Summit, aims to provide a solid platform for discussing issues pertaining to the socio-economic impact of pollution on the Ghanaian economy. The summit brings together all stakeholders in society to make necessary contributions to environment-related policies.
