Ghana’s Ministry of Energy and Green Transition has announced plans to introduce a national net-metering framework that would allow households and businesses with rooftop solar installations to sell excess electricity back into the national grid, as part of a wider push to accelerate the country’s renewable energy transition.
The announcement was made by Dr Robert Sogbadji, Deputy Director for Renewable Energy and Green Transition at the Ministry, at the Second Edition of the Ghana Green Investment Dialogue and Capacity Building Workshop in Accra on Thursday. The workshop was organised by the Climate Parliament in partnership with the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and the Parliament of Ghana.
Dr Sogbadji said Ghana had reached a stage where isolated pilot schemes and policy frameworks were no longer sufficient. “We must now accelerate the pace, moving from pilot projects and policy frameworks to large-scale deployment and bankable investment pipelines at the constituency level,” he said.
He said the net-metering initiative would reduce electricity bills for consumers while encouraging private sector participation and distributed solar investment. The Ministry is also scaling up solar mini-grids and off-grid systems to extend electricity access to remote and island communities, building on work done under the Scaling-Up Renewable Energy Programme (SREP), which has already brought clean power to lakeside and island settlements.
Dr Sogbadji noted that Ghana’s electricity access rate has surpassed 89 percent, placing it among the leading countries in sub-Saharan Africa. He said the government intends to publish a revised Renewable Energy Master Plan shortly to guide the next phase of the country’s energy development agenda.
Mr Samuel Arkurst, Director of the Real Sector Division at the Ministry of Finance, said the renewable energy transition was both an environmental imperative and an economic one, warning that climate-related shocks including flooding, coastal erosion, and erratic rainfall were already straining public finances. He said the country’s climate commitments under the Paris Agreement, framed through its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), depended on moving from policy to investable projects with the backing of financial institutions and development partners.
Mr Dickson Kyere-Duah, Member of Parliament for Berekum West, added that supportive regulatory frameworks and innovative financing were essential to driving green investment at scale.
