Electricity demand scenarios for Ghana's long term development plans

Abstract

Ghana in the mid-1990s launched a long-term development plan to transforms its low-income country status into an upper middle-income economy by 2020. The plan envisaged accelerating the average annual real GDP growth of about 4.4% in the 1990s to around 8.3% per annum by 2020. The sustainability of the energy required by the economic transformation was investigated by Energy Commission which in 2006 released Ghana's first long term energy plan called Strategic National Energy Plan (SNEP) to propel the long term economic growth vision. The SNEP2006-2020 has been updated to 2016–2030 following among other factors the debasing of the country's economy from 1993 to 2006. Electricity demand is projected to increase at an average annual growth rate of 6.57.7% from about 16,500 GWh in 2016 to 40,000–52,000 GWh in 2030, the global SE4ALL target-year, depending upon the performance of the economy. The sectoral demands have also been investigated.