- ECOWAS encourages SADC to invest in the private sector energy transition.
- Senator Edwin Melvin Snowe emphasized the role of the private sector in the energy transition.
This week, Senator Edwin Melvin Snowe of Bomi County spoke on behalf of Dr Sidie Mohamed Tunis, Speaker of the ECOWAS Parliament, at the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Parliamentary Forum 51st Plenary Assembly, emphasizing the importance of private sector energy conservation.
Considering the theme of the forum, “Towards Energy Efficiency, Sustainability, and Self Sufficiency in the SADC Region”, he encouraged the SADC Parliament to place the more significant issues of energy efficiency, building capability in energy management, promoting research and development in energy technologies and soliciting the public interest on the role of the private sector in energy conservation at the core of their deliberations.
In his remarks, he expressed the ECOWAS Parliament’s willingness to share experiences on public-private partnerships in the energy sector and to promote ideas to address this critical issue across the regions. He also stressed the importance of understanding the more significant issues of energy efficiency, building capability in energy management, encouraging research and development in energy technologies, and soliciting the public interest in the role of the private sector in energy conservation.
On behalf of ECOWAS, he said: “As for the ECOWAS region, we continue to emphasize that private sector engagement is fundamental to our goal of achieving energy efficiency. We believe leveraging private-sector engagement is a powerful force for improving lives, strengthening communities, and accelerating countries towards self-reliance.”
He also stated that the West African Power Pool, for example, is an obvious example of a public-private partnership. The WAPP promotes power generation and transmission infrastructures and coordinates power exchange among the ECOWAS Member States, providing regular and reliable energy at a competitive cost to residents of the region’s fourteen countries.