Ghana is our next African country to highlight Geothermal Energy opportunities. Blessed with valuable mineral ores and offshore oil & gas, Ghana also has clean, environmentally sustainable Geothermal Energy prospects. A resilient energy grid needs more baseload and Geothermal is persistent and dispatchable. Funding and finance is available for renewable energies like this as the Energy Transition progresses.
- Ghana has very complex geology dominated by Paleoproterozoic Birimian rocks consisting of five evenly spaced volcanic belts trending northeast-southwest. The intervening basins between the volcanic belts are filled by sediments. The transition zone between the volcanic belts and the sedimentary basins has been found to be the site of gold mineralization in Ghana. Both the volcanic belts and sedimentary basins are intruded (i.e. dykes and sills) by granitoids;
- Ghana has substantial examples of geothermal systems: (1) faults, fractures network zones were depositional sites for hydrothermal fluids, facilitating geothermal fluid flow by providing channels of high permeability; (2) magmatic and granitoid intrusions with elevated thermal heat flux exist in abundance; (3) hydrothermal mineralisation fluids were expelled from these intrusions and precipitated into adjacent sedimentary systems; and (4) as the hydrothermal fluids moved through faults between formations, affected by shear zones, hydrothermal reservoirs were created;
- Clean, environmentally sustainable renewable Geothermal Energy is possible thanks to modern, low and medium enthalpy Binary ORC power generation solutions. Good geoscience tools are available to help incrementally explore and de-risk the areas of potentially suitable heat energy sources before more expensive drilling is required;
- Very attractive Levelised Cost of Electricity (LCOE) is commercially feasible for many developments to help improve electrification, reduce energy poverty, and increase grid resilience across Ghana.
