The Ministry of Transport has announced plans to use electric buses in Ghana on a pilot basis as part of measures to decarbonize and contribute toward net-zero emissions.

The Ministry is therefore importing 10 electric buses to pilot in selected cities.

This was announced by Deputy Minister of Transport, Alhassan Tampuli at the national energy transition forum at Mole on Tuesday.

“We have a number of electric vehicles running in Accra. What we don’t have are the charging points, so it is difficult for us to roll out soon enough,” he explained.

He thus said the government is importing the buses “for us to pilot and see how we can transition when the time comes.”

Energy transition refers to the global shift from carbon-based systems of energy production and consumption such as oil and gas to fuel woods to clean sources of energy such as wind, solar, and nuclear energy to reduce emissions.

Though it has been established that Ghana emits just about 0.12% of the world’s emissions, there is the need to control the growth of her greenhouse emissions and work towards a net-zero future.

Ghana is therefore in the process of developing an energy transition plan to work towards this target.

A Deputy Minister for Energy, Dr. Mohammed Amin Adam, also noted that Africa and developing countries, in general, are expecting the west to reduce their emissions more and faster and also fund developing countries in their quest to reduce emissions.

Achieving net-zero emissions means that some greenhouse gases are still released, but these are offset by removing an equivalent amount of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and storing it permanently in soil, plants, or materials.