The Minister of Transport, Kwaku Ofori Asiamah, has said an Electric Vehicle Policy is being developed to guide the deployment and upscale of electric vehicles in the country.
To that effect, he said the ministry was preparing to commence stakeholder consultations “which are a critical requirement for the policy approval process”.
“The policy, alongside other similar initiatives, is part of the government’s broader strategy towards achieving a net-zero emission future in the transport sector,” Mr Asiamah said in an address read on his behalf at the 2022 Annual General Meeting of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (CILT) in Accra last Thursday.
It was on the theme: “Green Transport and Supply Chains: Key to Sustain the future of Industry and Environment”.
Mr Asiamah noted that as transport practitioners and managers, they should begin to develop corporate policies and initiatives that led to carbon reductions specifically, as well as reduce resource demand.
Green transportation
On green transportation, Mr Asiamah said it was made up of modes of transportation that did not depend on diminishing natural resources such as fossil fuels and that those transportation modes relied solely on renewable energy sources.
He indicated that they also had a very low impact on the environment as such modes produced minimal to no greenhouse gas emissions.
Mr Asiamah said the government recognised that the energy and transportation sectors were key areas in reducing emissions and that strategies were, therefore, being deployed to transition those sectors towards net-zero emissions in the future.
“To lay the foundation for decarbonisation, a National Energy Transition Framework (2022-2070) has been developed. This framework will ensure that Ghana’s transition will be achieved in a just and equitable manner.
“For the transport sector, the main means for road transport in the transition would be electric vehicles, Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) vehicles and hydrogen vehicles. We expect that by 2040, a considerable number of petrol and diesel filling stations will be repurposed to serve vehicles that use CNG, electricity and hydrogen fuels,” he said.
That ambition, he said, called for an estimated investment of $577 million in infrastructure such as electric vehicle charging points and CNG dispensing stations, among others.
Attention
The President of the CILT, Mr Mark Amoamah, said there was increasing global attention on the carbon footprint of “our economic activities of the food we eat and the choices of the products we use. It requires investments in new facilities and capabilities or even a complete rethink of business and operating models.
But standing still and continuing business as usual is not an option”.
He, therefore, urged businesses to develop corporate strategies that would see a gradual shift into green operations to enhance their performance in terms of less waste manufacturing, reuse and recycling of products, reduction in manufacturing costs, greater efficiency of assets, positive image building and greater customer satisfaction.
“Logistics and transport companies that can incorporate sustainability into their long-term strategies will be able to seize growth opportunities and fortify business resilience. Green solutions can be integrated into different segments of the logistics value chain – from storage to transportation – to improve productivity and minimise our carbon footprint.
“The burden of our supply chain continues to fall on our transporters and their drivers, acknowledge that road cargo is operations impact on the environment. Commercial vehicles are heavy polluters and the more vehicles that join our supply chain, the greater the impact on the environment,” he said.
The CILT International President-elect, Chief Teete Owusu-Nortey, said the organisation had chalked up a lot of successes.
For instance, he said CILT Ghana was among the top three income earners when it came to education globally.