Dr Moumini Savadogo, the Executive Director, West African Science Service Centre on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use (WASCAL), has lauded global partners for contributing towards the implementation of the Climate Information for Integrated Renewable Electricity Generation Project.

"I want to thank all the global partners for the intense impact made in the lives of communities in West Africa through this project. I am glad to announce that the CIREG project has installed three demonstrators of renewable electricity generation to communities", he said.

These included; an off-grid photo-voltaic power plant connecting more than 120 households and impacting at least 840 lives in West Africa.

This was in a statement signed by Nii Commey, the Public Relations Manager, WASCAL and copied to the Ghana News Agency in Accra.

The project brought together researchers from West Africa and institutes to work with stakeholders and decision-makers from West Africa to co-generate demand-driven climate services in the frame of renewable energy planning.

It also provided practical training sessions for West African stakeholders, including; academic and non-academics, public and private institutions, and research and development agencies of water and energy sectors of Burkina, Ghana, Niger and Togo

The project offered at least 60 women from Niger, involved in irrigation market gardening with the centralized PV-based borehole water pumping system which is providing access to clean water for consumption and micro- a hybrid Hydropower-solar power complementary demonstrator has been developed to provide electricity to a local community Business Centre in rural Togo.

The project executed Science-Policy dialogues on renewable electricity solutions that account for national and regional development policies under different climate scenarios in West Africa and engaged in participatory scenarios on building on energy management and planning in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in West Africa.

The participants, the statement said assessed existing policies, strategies, and plans, with focus on identifying interlinkages between renewable electricity generation and other national development goals and targets, including the Nationally Determined Contributions on Climate Change and the SDGs.

The statement said the provision of climate services in the CIREG project comprised a preparation phase and a development phase of which policymakers and experts from Ghana were involved in each phase.

The project also developed an integrated climate service consisting of climate scenarios, energy and water management tools, some of which are already being used by the Ghana Water Resources Commission, the Energy Commission and the Volta River Authority.

The tools developed in the project would allow policymakers and experts to understand the consequences and trade-offs of four electricity generation development scenarios, including; the examination of the performance of existing and planned national capacity for renewable electricity generation, and the National Renewable Energy Action Plan, the climate smart scenario which examined the integrated potential of hydropower.

The CIREG Project was run in partnership with WASCAL, and its consortium members with co-funding from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, funders FORMAS, Innovations Fonden and Belgian Science Policy Office, IFD, and the European Union Union's Horizon2020 Framework Programme.