Energy and environmental researcher, Professor Ing. Eric Ofosu Antwi is calling on the government to set up a panel of experts to conduct simulations and propose solutions to prevent future disasters caused by the spillage of the Akosombo Dam.
Antwi, who is also the director of the Regional Centre for Energy and Environmental Sustainability, said that every litre of water spilled from the Akosombo Dam is a loss of revenue that could have been used to generate power and sell to other West African countries, instead of the havoc it has caused to people in parts of the Volta, Eastern, Greater Accra, and Northern Regions.
“The amount of water we have spilled is lost money for Ghana,” Antwi said. “We could have used that to save a lot of money that we use to import crude oil and other things to generate electricity from the thermal plants, and also reduce the climate change that we are causing.”
“The government must bring together a panel of experts to begin serious simulations for us,” Antwi added. “Fortunately, we have the West Africa Power Pool, where we can even export power to other countries. So, in a situation where we anticipate that the Akosombo will be spilling, we could generate more electricity and sell it to other countries at a cheaper rate, reducing the damage we are seeing downstream.”
“We need to do serious analysis, integrated power sector analysis to ensure that we can prevent this because at the downstream end, people have settled there and we cannot fight water and these levels of flooding we are seeing will come back and the investments downstream are huge and so we have to look at what we can do to prevent this in future and we have the expertise in Ghana to ensure that and come out with recommendations on the kind of equipment to install to help in advising on how the Dam’s operation should take place,” Ing Antwi further told Selorm Adonoo on The Big Issue on Citi FM and Citi TV.