Guest blog post by Harold “Hal” Pontez, President and CEO of HPI , and participant in the Commerce Department's West Africa Energy Business Development Mission. 

By no stretch of the imagination, I am a very lucky man. Aside from sharing a great life with my wife and daughter, I’ve had the great pleasure of waking up each day for 30 years excited to take on new challenges at a job that I love. 

Over the course of those years, some may say I’ve developed a bit of a routine: 

5:00 am – Turn on the lights (waking up the dogs), get dressed and head to the gym for a morning workout session. (Hopefully my iPod is charged or it’s going to be a brutal morning!). 

6:30 am – Brew a cup of coffee and power up the laptop to catch up on the morning headlines and email.

7:00 am – Breakfast- usually I pop a bagel in the toaster (the Lone Star State has perfected the art of creating larger bagels, but they’re still nothing like the ones in my home state of New York!).

While the intricacies of my mornings may be a snooze fest to some, there is one essential component that all of these tasks would be impossible without- power. 

It is estimated that over 600 million people (that’s two-thirds of the population) in sub-Saharan Africa lack access to electricity. While countries in the region continue to see rapid commercial development, they have been plagued with electricity and gas shortages, directly impacting businesses, national GDP and quality of life throughout the country since 2009. Reliable power generation is essential to the development of countries like Ghana, where the country is expected to serve as an example for stability, and steady and diversified economic growth.