Mfantseman Girls' Senior High School (SHS) emerged champions of the Energy Commission/GES Renewable Challenge in the Central Region.

The school shrugged off competition from St. Augustine’s College, Adisadel College, Holy Child School, and six other schools to retain the trophy as the regional champions.

Under the rules of the competition, the students were expected to develop projects in the areas of either clean cooking or food processing, and these should be related to the use of renewable energy technologies.

Schools were also encouraged to come up with new products, innovations, accessories to products or digital innovations to improve the performance or efficiencies of existing projects.

The projects to be submitted by the school at the end of the competition were expected to help individuals or businesses in the residential, commercial, or industrial sectors of the clean cooking value chain.

In the area of clean cooking, the focus was on either improving cooking stoves or fuel, while for food processing, schools were made to focus on how renewable energy could be utilized in food processing and preservation.

Mfantseman Girls SHS used cow dung for biogas in place of charcoal for cooking. They urged the government to invest more in the production of biogas instead of the use of charcoal and firewood for cooking.

One representative of Mfantseman Girls SHS, Wilhelmina Yeboah, explained that the biogas was made out of biodegradable materials like human excreta and waste products, which are less harmful to society as compared to the fumes charcoal and firewood produce.

She added that “As we are moving to the zonal level, we are going to work hard and improve on our project.”

She was convinced the project could, one way or the other, be beneficial to the Ghanaian society.

Kofi Agyarko, Representative of the Energy Commission, explained that the aim of the project is to promote creative thinking and mentorship to young students and also offer them the platform to put the theories they have learnt in books into practice.

He said, “The world has moved on and new cooking technologies such as induction cooking have revolutionized our clean cooking space."

"Of course, not all of us can afford to switch to these new cooking technologies, and that’s why a home-grown solution will be needed for our clean cooking strategies will be needed to achieve universal clean cooking strategies by 2030."

Mrs. Martha Owusu Agyemang, stated that the energy renewable project since its inception has had a positive impact in creating solutions in the energy sector.

“This project has a lot of benefits ranging from awards to equipping students with research skills, how energy is converted from one state to the other and so on," she added.

“The government, the Energy Commission, and all other authorities in the energy sector should solicit funds to help sustain this challenge,” she said.

This year’s theme, “Clean Cooking and Food Processing Using Renewable Energy Technologies,” was initiated to demonstrate the use of digital innovations in cooking and preserving food.

The Renewable Energy Challenge, which started in 2019, provides students in the second cycle the platform to exhibit their innovations in turning waste products into energy.