The Economic Community of West African States member states will have access to sustainable energy, the ECOWAS Centre for Renewable and Energy Efficiency has said.
This was disclosed on Tuesday in Abuja during the closing ceremony of the seventh ECOWAS Sustainable Energy Forum 2022 by Francis Simpore, executive director of ECREE.
“Our strategic objective is to integrate the operation of the community’s national power grids into a unified regional electricity market to ensure a stable, regular, and reliable supply of competitively priced electricity to the citizens of the ECOWAS member states in the medium term,” Mr Simpore, said.
He added, “The ECOWAS Commission specialised energy agency, together with key stakeholders like the ministry of power, among others, are working tirelessly to address challenges of power. We plan to achieve this objective by promoting and developing power generation and transmission facilities and equipment and coordinating electricity trade among the ECOWAS member states.”
According to the ECOWAS official, ECREE “is also working on improving” energy access for the ECOWAS rural population and actively promoting the deployment of off-grid energy solutions, such as clean energy mini-grids and stand-alone technologies.
“To this end, several regional projects are at the stage of implementation within the region. We aim to have an access consolidated rate of 70 per cent by 2030,” Mr Simpore noted.
