More Electricity, More Fossil Fuel: Ghana’s Emerging Growth-Carbon Dilemma

Ghana’s electricity story in 2025 can be read through three numbers: 9.3%, 66.8% and 0.8%.

The first number is welcome. Total electricity consumption, including system losses, reached 27,015 gigawatt-hours, 9.3% more than in 2024. Peak demand climbed 8.4% to 4,283 megawatts. These figures suggest an economy asking more of its power system. Homes need dependable electricity for ordinary life. Shops and factories need it to work longer, invest and employ. Mines, hospitals, schools and digital services cannot expand on scarcity.

The second number is more troubling. Thermal plants supplied 66.8% of the electricity generated in 2025. Their output rose by 23.7%, while hydro generation fell by 11.5%. In practical terms, much of the power that met Ghana’s new demand came from plants burning fuel.

Then comes 0.8%. That was the contribution of non-hydro renewable sources, mainly solar and biogas, to grid generation. It is a slender presence in a country with abundant sunshine and a growing need for electricity.

None of this means demand should be restrained. Ghana needs more power, not less. The danger lies in allowing each additional unit of electricity to deepen dependence on imported fuel, volatile exchange rates and carbon emissions. Growth can continue while the carbon required to produce it falls; economists call this carbon decoupling. Ghana’s challenge is to turn that idea into the operating logic of its power system. That is the decisive test.

Can Ghana expand the electricity its economy needs while reducing the carbon embedded in each unit of national progress?

Electricity growth is not the enemy

Rising electricity use is often treated as a warning sign because it places pressure on generation and the grid. In a developing economy, however, low demand is hardly a badge of success. It may reflect firms that cannot expand, households rationing basic services and communities left outside productive activity.

Ghana’s demand growth should therefore be read as both opportunity and obligation. Reliable power allows small businesses to mechanise. It supports cold storage, digital payments and longer operating hours. Hospitals can protect medicines, schools can use modern equipment and industry can plan production without keeping expensive backup systems on standby.

The policy failure would not be the increase in electricity consumption. It would be meeting every new increment of demand through a system that becomes more expensive to operate and more exposed to fossil-fuel risk. The composition of the additional power matters as much as the amount supplied.

The fuel beneath the growth

The Energy Commission’s 2026 Energy Outlook reports that Ghana generated 27,015 GWh in 2025. Thermal plants produced 18,045 GWh, or 66.8% of the total. Hydropower contributed 8,752 GWh, equal to 32.4%, while grid-connected solar and biogas supplied only 207 GWh, or 0.8%.

The movement within those totals is even more revealing. Thermal output increased by 23.7% from the previous year. Hydro generation fell by 11.5% because of reduced inflows, while non-hydro renewable generation rose from a base too small to alter the overall balance. Thermal plants carried most of the system’s expansion.

This pattern does not, by itself, prove that Ghana’s electricity-sector carbon intensity increased in 2025. Thermal plants differ in fuel and efficiency, while annual emissions depend on how each unit was dispatched. A defensible conclusion requires actual carbon-dioxide emissions divided by electricity generated. Even so, the more thermal-heavy mix creates a serious prima facie concern that government reporting should test rather than leave to assumption.

The fuel data deepen that concern. Gas shortages pushed generators towards heavy fuel oil, light crude oil and diesel. Their combined consumption reached 3,092,066 barrels in 2025—almost nine times the quantity projected. What appears at first to be a climate problem is also a fuel-security problem with a price tag.

Liquid fuels are generally costlier than dependable gas supply for Ghana’s thermal fleet. They also increase demand for foreign exchange and expose electricity costs to movements in international oil markets. When gas becomes unreliable, the system does not merely emit differently. It imports more financial volatility into tariffs, public finances and business costs.

Carbon decoupling, without the jargon

Carbon decoupling describes a simple development goal: economic and social progress should continue, but each cedi of additional output should require less carbon than before. Electricity use may rise while emissions grow more slowly. Better still, the economy and electricity supply can expand while total emissions stabilise or fall.

Consider two factories producing the same output. One relies on inefficient machinery and carbon-heavy electricity. The other uses efficient equipment supplied by a cleaner grid. Both contribute to the economy, but the second embeds less carbon in every cedi of production. Decoupling means moving the national economy towards that second factory, year after year.

For the power sector, the clearest measure is emissions per kilowatt-hour. That figure should fall as renewable generation expands, system efficiency improves and the dirtiest backup fuels become less necessary. GDP growth can then draw on more electricity without dragging emissions upward at the same rate.

The projected direction should concern us

The same official outlook projects that thermal generation could supply about 73% of Ghana’s electricity in 2026 under the base case. Hydro would provide 25.8%, while non-hydro renewables would reach only 1.2%. This is a projection, not a completed result. It nevertheless shows the direction in which the system may move without faster investment and operational reform.

A single thermal-heavy year need not define Ghana’s future. Hydrology varies, plants undergo maintenance and fuel constraints can distort dispatch. The danger comes when an emergency pattern hardens into long-lived infrastructure and contractual obligations. Each year of delay can make the eventual transition more expensive.

Gas still has a transitional role because flexible thermal generation can support the grid when solar output changes or hydropower is constrained. Yet a transition fuel must function as a bridge. It cannot become a destination that postpones renewable investment while repeatedly giving way to expensive liquid fuels whenever supply falters.

One problem, not three competing agendas

Energy security, affordability and decarbonisation are often presented as competing objectives. Ghana’s 2025 experience shows why they should be managed as one problem. Gas insecurity encouraged liquid-fuel use. Liquid fuels raised cost exposure and likely increased emissions relative to a cleaner dispatch. One operational weakness therefore touched all three objectives at once.

The immediate response should combine dependable fuel planning with faster renewable deployment. Competitive procurement can bring more utility-scale solar onto the grid, but projects also need credible payment arrangements and transmission access. Storage and flexible grid operations would allow a larger share of variable generation without compromising reliability.

Distributed renewable energy deserves equal attention. Solar systems on factories, public buildings and commercial premises can reduce pressure during daylight hours. Clear interconnection rules and finance suited to local businesses would turn rooftops into productive energy assets rather than decorative pilot projects.

Efficiency is the quieter part of the solution. Energy audits can help industry produce more with each kilowatt-hour. Better appliances can lower household bills without suppressing useful services. Reducing technical and commercial losses would also make existing generation serve more paying demand before new fuel is purchased.

Publish a decoupling scoreboard

Ghana cannot manage what it does not report clearly. The country needs a compact annual scoreboard showing total electricity-sector carbon-dioxide emissions and emissions per kilowatt-hour. It should also track the energy used for each unit of real GDP.

The same report should state renewable generation and system losses. Liquid-fuel dependence deserves its own indicator because it connects climate performance to foreign-exchange pressure and generation cost. A consistent historical series would reveal whether the system is genuinely loosening the bond between progress and carbon.

Ghana’s revised Nationally Determined Contribution already distributes climate responsibilities across public institutions and estimates that implementing its 2020–2030 measures will require between US$9.3 billion and US$15.5 billion. A public electricity scoreboard would turn part of that broad architecture into a practical accountability tool.

Publishing the numbers would also improve investment decisions. Developers could see where grid constraints and carbon reductions are most valuable. Parliament and civil society could compare policy claims with operational outcomes. Consumers would have a clearer basis for judging whether higher costs are financing a stronger system or merely paying for recurring fuel insecurity.

A better measure of energy success

The 9.3% rise in electricity consumption is not the problem Ghana should try to reverse. It reflects needs that development policy ought to serve. The warning lies in the 66.8% thermal share and the 0.8% contribution from non-hydro renewables. Together, they show how easily growing demand can reinforce an old fuel structure.

Ghana still has room to choose a different path. Faster renewable deployment can reduce fuel exposure. Reliable gas can prevent an avoidable retreat to liquid fuels during the transition. Efficiency and loss reduction can stretch every unit already produced.

The country should therefore measure electricity success not only in megawatts and gigawatt-hours, but also in cost, reliability and carbon per unit of prosperity. More electricity should mean more national progress—not a deeper fossil-fuel lock-in.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alhassan Ibn Abdallah is an electronic-waste entrepreneur and sustainability advocate. He holds an MSc in Energy and Sustainable Management from KNUST and is pursuing an MSc in Economics with Informatics at GCTU. His work promotes safer resource recovery, climate innovation and a just energy transition. He advocates a circular economy that includes informal workers in environmental reform.