Prioritizing strategies to eliminate barriers to renewable energy adoption and development in Ghana: A CRITIC-fuzzy TOPSIS approach

Abstract

An effective energy provision is pivotal for socio-economic development. Nonetheless, renewable energy (RE) adoption and development in most developing countries are met with multidimensional challenges. Therefore, this study adopted the CRITIC and F-TOPSIS methods to assess RE barriers and prioritized RE adoption and development strategies in Ghana. Overall, twenty-two barriers were identified and grouped into six categories for the analysis. Again, nine strategies were proposed to surmount the barriers. The relative rankings of the barriers followed; technical, economic and financial, political and regulatory, institutional, social, and geographical. The present findings suggest that direct enabling and integrating policies, RE targets, education, and training are the most suitable strategies in respective sequence for removing the RE barriers. Subsequently, a sensitivity analysis conducted to test the robustness of study findings confirmed the results generated from obtained dataset. The study results imply that targeted efforts are required to engender the enabling conditions needed for high RE penetration in Ghana. Again, there is the need to create easily accessible economic avenues through enabling policy initiatives for RE development in the country.