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Leonard Ncube, Online Reporter

THE 4th edition of the international renewable energy conference and expo which will be officially opened by President Mnangagwa on 23 March, has started in Victoria Falls amid calls for investments in energy production.

The conference is a partnership between the Ministry of Energy and Power Development and AMH Holdings.

In attendance are Ministry officials, power utilities, independent power producers, financiers and various other stakeholders.

Energy Permanent Secretary Dr Gloria Magombo said the conference is a platform for Government and its partners to strategise towards implementing the Energy Policy targets.

“The conference is a partnership between the Ministry of Energy and Power Development with the AMH Holdings through their Standard newspaper who have seen it quiet critical to provide the voice to speak to our stakeholders and also inform the public about the developments within the energy sector, in particular what we are doing in energy development.

“The official opening is going to be done by the President who is also patron for renewable energy and we look forward to him coming in. We believe that he is the visionary for all that we are doing especially ensuring that we do have the necessary sustainable energy resources to power the middle income society by 2030,” said Dr Magombo.

She said President Mnangagwa had been graceful in agreeing to becomes a patron as he is a very critical partner in ensuring that we meet the critical supply requirement in ensuring that our economic growth is met.

Dr Magombo said the issue of energy security is not something that can be resolved by one entity and Government through National Development Strategy 1 has made it clear from a strategy point of view that there is a need to build new capacity from Government and private sector partnership.

“As you are aware as Government we have an Energy Policy which has set targets and what we are doing now is, every year we take stock of what has happened. We invited other parties like technology providers, utilities, independent power producers and different stakeholders to come and speak of their own programmes as they are our partners to provide energy security,” said Dr Magombo.

The conference which will end Friday is being held under the theme: Clean energy possibilities.

Proceedings started with a field visit yesterday and today delegates are engaged in panel discussions ahead of presentations tomorrow.

-@ncubeleon