Albert Oppong-Ansah
Accra, Aug. 22, GNA-Ghana yesterday opened its maiden carbon market stakeholder engagement series for actors in the clean cookstove.
The engagement is to discuss carbon market protocols and solicit feedback on the draft guidelines for obtaining authorisation for mitigation outcomes from energy-efficient cookstove investments.
The three-day event seeks to also build the capacity, raise awareness, and ensure due diligence and integrity of Ghana’s carbon market, particularly within the sector.
It is being organised jointly by the Carbon Market Office, at the Environmental Protection Agency (CMO-EPA), the Ministry of Energy with funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), through the Feed the Future Africa Trade and Investment program (USAID ARI).
Speaking at the opening, Madam Wilhelmina Asamoah, the Chief Director of the Ministry of Energy, stated that the sector had attracted significant global attention and key players.
She explained that due to Government policies and interventions, various stakeholders had positively influenced the clean cooking market, paving the way for investment, scaling up, and commercialisation.
The Chief Director said, “A number of businesses and investors have expressed interest in dealing in improved cookstoves, including institutional cookstoves, electric cookstoves and pressure cookers, and LPG stoves, under various carbon initiatives.”
She said carbon markets were efficient ways to accelerate decarbonisation commitment in the Nationally Determined Contributions and mobilise finance to meet mitigation targets.
The Government, Madam Asamoah said, had demonstrated its commitment to meeting its mitigation targets through significant progress in developing policies, enhancing institutional collaboration, and establishing regulatory and standard frameworks for implementing mitigation actions.
She noted that as of December 2023, out of the 35 article six pipeline projects, 44 per cent of it was clean cooking due to the following interventions by the government.
Madam Asamoah said the Ghana Improve Cookstove Distribution Project (GICDP) was supporting the Energy Commission to establish a national figure for Fraction of non-renewable biomass (fNRB) in efforts to streamline the sector.
The Government, she said, had developed a formal guideline on energy-efficient biomass cookstoves under Article 6.2 of the Paris Agreement.
“The guideline aims to streamline the cookstove project to follow and obtain policy approvals from the Ministry of Energy, thermal efficiency standards from the Energy Commission, and authorisation from the CMO,” she said.
She said a testing lab at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research had been upgraded to the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) standard with ISO compliance number to improve the capacity of the lab to test more stoves.
The Energy Commission, she said, was working on a number of regulations to implement standards and labelling schemes for improved biomass cookstoves.
A woodfuel Regulation to regulate the production, processing, transportation, and marketing of woodfuel in Ghana is also being developed.
Mr. Kingsley Ekow Gura-Sey, the Director, Environmental Assessment and Management at the EPA, said one of the targets of the sector was to reduce emissions and central to that effort was the transformation of the energy landscape, particularly in clean cooking technologies.
He said the distribution of three million improved biomass stoves and the expansion of LPG access, aimed to transition at least 50 per cent of the population to LPG by 2030, were vital components of the country’s broader strategy to enhance food security, improve public health, and protect the environment.
Mr Gura-Sey said, “With your collaboration, we can ensure that Ghana’s carbon market remains robust, transparent, aligns with our national priorities and meets international standards.”
Mr Allan Pineda, the West Africa Regional Director, USAID Africa Trade and Investment activity, said human development was vulnerable to climate change and that concrete action was needed to mitigate and adapt to climate change.
The clean cookstove sector, he said, played a pivotal role in that effort, offering a means to reduce emissions, improve public health, and protect the forests.
Mr Pineda noted that ensuring environmental integrity and transparency was everyone’s business and urged a strong collaboration to foster stronger partnerships, particularly with the private sector, to drive investment and innovation.
“…And we are committed to supporting Ghana in these efforts. Through USAID, we are promoting sustainable agriculture, economic growth, job creation, and the empowerment of women and youth,” he said.
GNA