Members of Parliament urged to prioritize Climate change policies to fast track renewable energy transition.

Biyika Laurence Songa the Member of Parliament Ora County in Westnile also chairperson Parliamentary Committee on Climate Change has urged fellow Parliamentarians to see the gaps in the law and work together towards putting the legal framework to promote Renewable Energy.

According to Songa, Uganda as a country choose adaptation to Renewable Energy and this can be achieved by coordination and collaboration with in government, civil societies, academia and private sector to power the economy using this clean energy.

“The fact that our Climate change contribution is still low, we need to conserve more wetlands and plant more trees to absorb more green gases generated by the oil production” Songa highlighted.

The Members of Parliament were having a breakfast engagement with Multi-Actor Partnerships on 100% Renewable Energy transition for Uganda at Hotel Africana in Kampala on Wednesday.

The Acting Principle Energy officer in the Ministry of Energy Micheal Ahimbisibwe articulated that for this transition to be successful, all sectors should address issues of behavior change, technologies to adopt, social environment and also setting aside resources for this project.

“Members of Parliament can also lead serious regulations like advocating for resource allocation that will help us attain this transition” Micheal added.

Earlier, the 100% Renewable Energy transition process was projected by 2030, but according to Micheal the transition was later shifted to 2040 which calls for urgent setting of a suitable working environment for this goal to be achieved.

Eric Naivasha the Associate Director Energy, Environment and Climate Change at Equity Group Foundation stated that energy efficiency is key in the transition because its far more cheaper to use efficiently what we have than to produce what we need.

He also highlighted that as Equity, they are also undertaking several campaigns including that of agriculture which involves planting of trees and also reduce their consumption to ensure that 30% of green gasses are reduced in the next five years.

In his remarks, Yonah Turinayo the WWF Energy and Climate coordinator thanked Ecological Christian Organization for this dialogue and also assured that Uganda has enough Renewable Energy potential to support the whole country and it is the duty of various stakeholders to extract these resources.

“We need to do capacity building and also sensitize masses, I call upon government to inject resources into the multi-actor partnerships platforms such that we can always discuss and find a way forward on how to move towards the 100% energy transition” Yonah added.

In her closing remarks the Kapelebyong district woman representative also the deputy chairperson Climate Change committee Atuto Jacinta said that being that climate change is one of the challenges the world is facing today, the use of renewable energy will help in reducing some of these devastating effects.

She also called upon attendees for their immediate action before the effects that affect human health due to pollution of the environment intervene.