Dr. Sultan Woli, State minister of Energy in the Ministry of Water and Energy briefed the media, and here you have the key highlights

✅ The old energy policy does not reflect current realities and need to be revised and a work is in progress

 Some limitation of the existing policy and the need to revise it.

•  It does not consider women, youth and vulnerable groups participation,
• Energy source was primary hydro which is vulnerable to drought and there is a need to increase the energy mix from geothermal, solar, wind, biomass etc…
• Poor participation of private sector in generation, transmission and distribution and the current policy did not address it. The new policy will consider public private partnership. The PPP law favors this.
  The new policy will consider improving energy management

✅ There is an ongoing power sector reform and a revised policy is a kind of favorable precondition to pursue the PPP model. The policy will open the door for more financing to come.

✅ The draft policy is under public review and it will be sent to ministers of council soon.

✅ Energy sector is capital intensive and it is challenging to meet the demand by the public sector only. So, private sector will be engaged, and the revised policy will support it.

✅ In terms of National electrification program, we have reached 4500MW production capacity, and  reached 35% of the population from the grid and 11% from offgrid access. By 2025, we plan to reach 65% and 35% from ongrid and offgrid, respectively . We have also a new plan to be launched soon.

✅ Biogas technology is old but the gov does not do promotion and adoption is still low. We have increased cost as a challenge but we will work on it.

✅ Solar energy is relatively new and we have successful pilots including in PPP model. The new policy will reinforce the intervention.  

Source: Ministry of Water and Energy, MoWE

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