Nigeria’s energy transition requires solar driven capacity of 5GW yearly

Nigeria’s energy transition requires a solar-driven capacity increase at an unprecedented scale, amounting to over 5GW of additional capacity per year for 40 years until 2060.

Sharon Ikeazor, minister of state for environment, appearing in Lagos at the 19TH annual Aret Adams Memorial Lecture 2022, with the theme: “Global Energy Transition Agenda: Nigeria’s preparedness?”, said while this figure is staggering compared to anything that has been achieved anywhere in the world, it also highlights the important role of gas in creating the grid base load stability required to integrate renewables at scale.

She said the federal government is also in the process of preparing a long-term low emission development strategy and a national deep decarbonization plan.

These strategies will cover the agricultural sector in detail. They will complement the Energy Transition Plan and provide policy recommendations that will help to guide the national transition towards the green economy.

According to her, “One interesting fact to note is that beyond agricultural emissions from livestock and soils, the biggest contributors to emissions in Nigeria today are vehicular transportation, use of firewood, kerosene and charcoal for cooking, and the use of generator sets in homes and for commercial and industrial activities.”

This, the minister stated, highlights the importance of moving away from the use of generator sets which are prevalent across the country and the need to rapidly deploy clean cooking solutions.

She said Nigeria also needs to begin to accelerate the transition towards cleaner electric vehicles in order to curb emissions.

The baseline assessment, she said, showed that diesel generators account for approximately 80 percent of total electricity generation capacity in Nigeria, with natural gas and hydro accounting for the remaining 16 percent and four percent, respectively, while solar and wind account for less than one percent in industry. Cement production was identified as the highest emitting industrial sector, and in residences, firewood was identified as the main fuel used for cooking, especially in rural areas where it accounted for 81 percent of all cooking stoves.

“After analysing the baseline, the working team then assessed what it would take for Nigeria to achieve universal access to energy by 2030, in line with the trajectory required to achieve net-zero by 2060, while also generating enough power to drive industrialization and economic activity. This led to a series of pathways being defined across buildings, industry, oil and gas, power and transportation,” Ikeazor said.

She then explained: “Energy consumption within buildings represents 40% of total emissions in Nigeria due to the use of high-emitting cookstoves and the use of diesel generators. As such, decarbonizing buildings will require a transition to biogas and efficient firewood in rural areas and a focus on deep electrification in urban areas. It will also require a transition from generators to renewable energy sources, such as solar technologies, and in particular decentralised renewables to reach enterprises beyond the grid.

“The power sector, separate from power provided by diesel generators, only accounted for 9% of emissions, primarily due to gas combustion,” she said, adding that   scaling up the power sector is critical for the full electrification of the economy that is required to achieve the clean energy transition in Nigeria.

This will include both expanding grid capacity while maximising the renewable energy share in the centralised energy mix and deploying decentralised renewable sources at scale, she said.