Reject gas as transition fuel — ACEES
The Africa Centre For Energy and Environmental Sustainability (ACEES) has called for the rejection of gas as a transition fuel that can promote a just energy transition for the country.
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It said the natural gas was also a fossil fuel that emitted methane which was more harmful to the ozone layer and, therefore, could not be an alternative for a just energy transition.
At a workshop for civil society organisations (CSOs) on Just Energy Transition sustainability, the Executive Director of ACEES, Nurideen Abdulai, said focusing on gas as a sustainable renewable energy transition would not help the country achieve a just energy transition.
A just energy transition, he explained, was one that shifted from fossil fuel economy to a regenerative economy, thus an economy that healed itself from impacts.
Workshop
The workshop was to build the capacity of the CSOs to advocate an energy transition that would help the country and not further deepen the negative impact of extractive economy.
He explained that a just energy transition focused on a more sustainable and low carbon economy that was fair and equitable for stakeholders including workers, communities and the vulnerable.
"This is to say for us to achieve a just energy transition, we must move away from fossil fuels which affect the climate and have negative social and economic impact on the society".
Gas more harmful
Mr Abdulai said the idea of making natural gas a best fit for sustainable renewable energy transition should be discarded as it could be more harmful than carbons.
He explained that methane had higher global warming potentials than carbons and could avoid emissions that affected the environment.
Mr Abdulai indicated that the argument that Africans' emission of greenhouse gas was low and, therefore, should be left alone must not be encouraged because Africans were more vulnerable and less resilient to climate change.
"Here in Ghana, when it even rains heavily for five hours we know the effect it has on our people.
We cannot continue to do things which affects us greatly".
The CSOs, he said, had a role of advocating a just energy transition that would promote a regenerative economy which could cater for the development needs of the citizenry.
"There is a need for us to win the push for a just energy transition that will enable us to move from a fossil fuel economy to a regenerated economy which can fend for itself and help the development of the people,” he indicated.
The country, he said, needed to focus on renewable energies such as solar, wind, mini hydro, and converting waste into energy.
Not benefitting much
Another reason why natural gas should not be an alternative was that the activities in the sector, he said, had been accompanied by several social, economic, and environmental negative impacts which included low fish catch, loss of jobs and livelihoods, environmental degradation, pollution, among others.
He added that with all those effects, the people had not benefited significantly from the oil and gas industry.
Mr Abdulai noted that a few people were benefiting from the oil and gas sector as the beneficiaries mostly had been foreign companies who took proceeds of the industry to their countries.
He presented a list of companies working in the upstream sector, thus the exploration sector, which had only two Ghanaian companies.
"We need to benefit from our resources but if we cannot benefit from the resources, then we should leave them for a generation with technical know-how to explore them," he indicated".
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He said the exploration and production of oil and gas was affecting the environment and, therefore, the country must ensure that the people were the beneficiaries to those natural resources.
The assistant coordinator, Africa Coal Network, Nerrissa Edem Anku, urged the CSOs to champion an inclusive governance of natural resources.
Local communities, she said, tended to suffer from the decisions taken in how the resources were utilised and therefore, must be engaged to be involved in the process and also benefit from the resources.