Honourable Dr Joe Oteng-Adjei, Minister of Energy, visited The Energy Centre, KNUST on Friday 5 June 2009 to give a keynote address at the first Ghana Energy Access Review (GEAR) Roundtable.  Dr Oteng-Adjei affirmed the commitment of the Government of Ghana to provide access to electricity for all Ghanaians by the year 2020. He also affirmed the Government’s intention to enable 50% of Ghanaians to use LPG for cooking and the rest to have access to improved woodfuel-based cooking services by 2015.

The first GEAR Roundtable was organised the GIS-based Energy Access Project sponsored by the European Union Energy Initiative’s Partnership Dialogue Facility (EUEI-PDF). The Project, coordinated by Dr George Obeng of the Technology Consultancy Centre in the College of Engineering, started in January 2009 and is expected to be completed in December 2010.  The Project aims to contribute towards effective implementation of policies and plans for achieving energy access targets through the use of GIS to collate and analyze national level data and provide timely information for policy-making purposes in Ghana.

The Minister of Energy used his keynote address to launch a book on Renewable Energy Enterprise Development (REED).  The book, titled “Renewable Energy for Rural Areas in Africa: The Enterprise Development Approach”, presents the experience of SMEs and Micro-Enterprises in developing renewable energy technologies in the rural areas of Africa.   The book was sponsored by Trust Africa, a joint initiative of Ford Foundation and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) of Canada.