The Energy Commission has appealed to stakeholders in the energy and educational sectors, to provide sponsorship for its annual Renewable Energy Challenge, organised for second-cycle institutions in the northern and southern zones of the country.
The Challenge, organised in alliance with the Ghana Education Service is aimed at securing practical scientific knowledge from students and providing renewable energy innovations, to mitigate daring environmental challenges.
The 5th edition of this year’s challenge themed, “Application of renewable energy technologies in solving land degradation and water pollution”, witnessed 7 schools from a total of ten institutions, competing at the zonal level, of which Wesley Grammar Senior High School emerged as the winning team to compete at the regional level.
Speaking to ChannelOne TV News, the Executive Secretary of the Energy Commission, Ing. Oscar Amonoo-Neizer stressed the importance of the contest in providing the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), with practical energy-related inventions, which are modelled to solve ecological situations.
He further appealed for the support of stakeholders to aid in materialising the contest yearly.
“Now we at the Energy Commission have signed a memorandum of understanding with the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) where every winning project, CSIR takes up that project and remodels the project to make it more efficient, cost-effective and more productive.
“So for example the 2022 project which was the winning project, that’s the solar dehydrator, CSIR has modified that project, to be fit for purpose and very soon we will be commercializing it. Now the arrangement that the Energy Commission has with the schools is that every proceeds that comes out of the sale of the innovative projects, goes to the school.
“I’ll appeal to all stakeholders who are in this space to come on board and assist us, as Energy Commission, assist the schools that are participating in this competition to help them come out with some practical solutions to solve our challenges here in Ghana.” Ing. Oscar Amonoo-Neizer emphasised.
Regional Coordinator for the Greater Accra Region Renewable Energy Challenge, Berthy Buah, also, called for more publicity for the annual competition to promote the agenda of the contest.
“We want the public to come to our aid as a region. We want to make it big and vibrant. We want to publicize it. We want people to know that every year we go through this challenge. We do this innovative competition where students are able to come up with their ideas and then we also want to provide solutions to the problems that are within Greater Accra” she stated.