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Increased investment in renewable energy has been identified as a potential solution to the intermittent power supply in Ghana. Recently, a Renewable Energy Act has been passed which has a target of 10% of renewable energy component in Ghana’s energy mix by 2020. Whilst effort is been made to enhance supply through feed in tariffs, education and tax reduction on renewable energy related equipment, there is the need to understand the drivers of renewable energy demand. Due to dearth of studies on renewable energy demand in Ghana, this study seeks to fill both policy and research gap on renewable demand trend in Ghana. In this study, the general unrestricted model through Autometrics is used to estimate the determinants of renewable energy demand in Ghana. The results indicate that both economic factors and non-economic affect the demand for renewable energy. In addition, the underlying energy demand trend exhibits energy using behaviour. The study recommends that economic factors such as consumer subsidies should be considered when promoting renewable energy demand.

This study examined whether the expanding economic growth prospects of the UK could pose a threat to its existing energy predicaments. To ensure this, time series data from 1970- 2013 was used while the Zivot-Andrew structural break unit root test, the Bayer-Hank combined cointegration test, the ARDL bounds test and the VECM Granger causality test were applied, and this was validated using the innovation accounting test. The findings of the study confirmed the existence of cointegration among the variables. Following to this development, the study discovered that economic growth is negatively linked with energy demand in the UK, while trade openness adds to energy consumption; in addition to that, the position of the capital-labour ratio in UK was discovered to have a composite effect and with significant pressure on the country’s energy consumption. To support the direction of these findings, the study discovered that while a 1% increase in economic growth in UK declines energy consumption by 0.5422% surprisingly however, a 1% increase in Trade openness and capital-labour ratio were found to lead to an escalation of energy demand by 0.9817% and 3.3906% respectively. These statistics may be a threat to the UK energy predicaments only if electricity generation should fall below the expected and potential requirements. In view of this development, the study proposes the need to pursue mix energy policies and strategies that will ensure the use of advanced technology at the industrial level; an exclusive use of renewable energy at the household level and ensure adequate investment priorities within the renewable energy sector among others.

Efficient and well-developed power sector enables growth and boost of the economy, competitiveness of the national economy, affects the improvement of living standard of the population and development of society. In this respect, the basic task of the power sector is to ensure quality delivery of electricity to consumers that is secure and reliable, with optimal price of electricity and acceptable dynamics of delivery. Since the beginning of the 1980s until present time, the electric power sector has been facing a series of reforms and related restructuring processes aiming to improve the efficiency of the electricity market. This implies liberalisation and privatisation, and unbundling of power activities by which market competition is introduced in the production and supply of electricity. In the process of developing the power sector, it is necessary that the interests of preserving the environment for future generations are equally important as economic and energy interests of today's generations. In this regard, it is environmentally and economically justified to base the development of power systems on renewable energy sources. Increasing the share of renewable energy sources in the national electricity systems will contribute to an increase in energy and environmental efficiency in production and distribution of electricity and, consequently, energy sustainability of national economies.

In policy domain, economics is concerned with decision about the best alternative for undertaking public and private initiatives. Economic decision is a complex issue since many explicit and implicit economic factors affect the available economic alternatives. This is particularly difficult when we have to decide about launching an energy initiative. Generally, economic options are quantitatively evaluated using cost benefit analysis method which considers only explicit factors and does not cater for the opinion of masses about suitability of particular economic option. This shortfall of quantitative assessment is more pronounced in case of energy initiative for which the ultimate recipients are the masses and undertaking of energy initiative has to cater for the consent of the masses. The opinion of people gives important conclusions about explicit and implicit factors affecting the economic options. Thus, for launching an energy initiative, it is more prudent to go for qualitative participatory assessment procedure rather than rigid cost benefit analysis. In 2009, Government of Liberia decided to invest in an energy initiative to generate energy for the diverse consumption. In this case studydiscusses qualitative economic evaluation of three different options considered for the energy initiatives. The study was aimed at finding the relative feasibility of available options based on the opinion of people. For this purpose, instead of using cost benefit analysis method, ItemizedScale survey technique was used to ascertain the economic feasibility of options. Case study contains useful and pertinent policy lessons for implementation.

This paper provides an information technology perspective of energy that can help explain and promote more environmentally friendly energy sources. Following the equation energy equals mass times velocity squared (E = m * v2), a source 10 times more massive will produce 10 times more energy, but a source 10 times faster will produce 100 times more energy. Since chemical sources such as oil combustion are about ten times faster than mechanical sources such as waterfalls and winds, getting the same quantity of energy out of wind would require 10 times more mass (steel and concrete for wind towers), than getting it out of burning oil (CO2 and oil plants materials). A nuclear source is one million times faster than chemical, thus its mass requirement is negligible but technology (mainly information technology) is needed to safely drive its speed allowing us to substitute mass -i.e. future debris- with information.

This paper makes a review and systematize methods and techniques of economic evaluation applied to renewable energy projects, specific to wind energy projects. Both project and cost methodologies of economic evaluation are reviewed for a model optimization construction for a proposed optimization model with its objective function most appropriated. It is necessary to engage in different approaches, but complementary, microeconomic project evaluation methods and optimization methods applied to engineering solutions in wind energy converter systems. Optimization model for economic evaluation of wind farms can be as an efficient planning and resource management, which is the key to the success of an energy project. Wind energy is one of the most potent alternative energy resources; however the economics of wind energy is not yet universally favorable to place wind at a competitive platform with coal and natural gas (fossil fuels). Economic evaluation models of wind projects developed would allow investors to better plan their projects, as well as provide valuable insight into the areas that require further development to improve the overall economics of wind energy projects.