Mole National Park
is the largest of 16 protected areas in Ghana. It has 33 fringe communities with an estimated population of 100,000. The project site is in one of those communities, the village of Jang, located at the southwestern corner of the park.
Less than half of Mole National Park’s fringe communities have access to electricity and only a handful have potable drinking water. The lack of alternative livelihoods and viable economic activities has led to massive illegal logging of economic trees and charcoal production in protected areas, exacerbating the effects of climate change.
It is visioned that establishing a Renewable Energy Park (REEP) at this location will provide a model that can be replicated in other fringe communities as well as in other parts of the country and Africa.
Findings
The project comprises three technical components:
Microgrid system
The AfricaEnergyParks project aims to construct a microgrid system which integrates solar photovoltaics (PV), a battery energy storage system (BESS) and biomass combined heat and power (BCHP) to provide clean and reliable energy access in a rural off-grid community in Ghana.
Productive use of energy
A set of activities for the productive use of energy will be supported with improved machinery using electricity generated from the microgrid. These activities include reafforestation projects, growing of cashew in the boundary areas around the park, creation of women’s cooperatives for sheanut processing, soyabean cultivation and processing, as well as dry season gardening.
Improved cookstoves
The project will also test and promote the use of improved cookstoves (ICS) that can be easily integrated into the current traditional three-stone cooking system. This clean cooking intervention will help mitigate the increasing intrusion into protected wildlife parks for fuelwood, which has led to widespread deforestation and loss of biodiversity.