According to Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, the next New Patriotic Party (NPP) administration plans to increase Ghana’s energy mix by 2,000 megawatts or more over the course of the next four years.

The flagbearer of the NPP emphasized that the high cost of electricity in Ghana is making businesses less competitive. He attributes this to the high cost of petroleum on the international market and the fluctuating exchange rates.

Speaking to the clergy in the Volta Region, Dr. Bawumia claimed that Ghana’s energy mix’s sensitivity to global crude prices and variations in foreign exchange raises the typical Ghanaian’s cost of living and makes businesses less competitive.

He declared that in the next four years, he plans to actively pursue solar energy in an effort to mitigate the high fuel prices that businesses and Ghanaians must pay.

“To reduce the cost of living is to look at our power generation. Ghana currently relies a lot on oil and gas to generate power and if you look at their [oil and gas] costs, they are quite high so anytime the prices move up in the Middle East, fuel, electricity, and transport prices also move up and so I want us to move away from oil and gas to solar power. It is the key for us in the generation of electricity.

“My goal and the goal that I have stated is that in the next four years, Ghana should add 2,000 megawatts of solar power to the generation of power and that is more than half of our consumption of electricity and so combine that with Akosombo and you would nearly reduce the cost of power by nearly 50 per cent and that will give our businesses a competitive advantage.”