The Federal Government of Nigeria launch its Energy Transition Plan on August 24, 2022. The plan is tailored to guide the country towards the twin objective of achieving universal access to energy by 2030 and a carbon-neutral energy system by 2060. According to a statement signed by the Director of Communications of Sustainable Energy for All (SEforAll), Sherry Kennedy, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo (SAN) will lead other stakeholders to launch the energy transition plan in Abuja.
Energy Transition Plan will also map out strategies for Nigeria to provide enough energy to power industry and other productive uses. The Energy Transition Plan is supported by Sustainable Energy for All, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet. The launch will feature remarks from prominent officials from Nigeria, Rwanda, Egypt, and Senegal as well as international community leaders from the United Nations, Sustainable Energy for All, the World Bank, African Development Bank, IRENA, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet.
President Buhari at COP26 says Nigeria to achieve net-zero by 2060.
At COP26 in Glasgow in 2021, President Muhammadu Buhari announced Nigeria’s ambition to achieve net-zero by 2060. The launch of this plan showcases the country’s political leadership in the global energy sector, and especially on the African continent towards a just, equitable and inclusive energy transition. The Energy Transition Plan was developed through the Energy Transition Commission. The insights from the plan were reflected in President Buhari’s address at COP26 in Glasgow. There, he stated that Nigeria was looking for partners in innovation and finance at scale to enable a “stable transition” in energy markets and bottom-up transition pathways across energy markets, adaptation and resilience, nature-based solutions, clean cooking, gender, and green jobs.
The country has championed the cause for a just, equitable and inclusive energy transition in its role as Global Theme Champion on Energy Transition at the UN High-Level Dialogue on Energy (HLDE). Nigeria has submitted an ambitious UN Energy Compact, which featured its immediate priorities to electrify 25 million people across 5 million homes and leverage natural gas resources to address access to clean cooking by 2027. This ambition is backed by an integrated energy planning tool launched earlier in 2022, which demonstrates how Nigeria will use geospatial data and modelling to identify the mix of technologies and spending required to achieve universal energy access.
Nigeria’s net-zero ambition still needs a lot of efforts.
Net zero is a target of completely negating the amount of greenhouse gases produced by human activity, which is to be achieved by reducing emissions and implementing methods of absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. In other words, the carbon footprint of individuals in Nigeria needs to be drastically reduced. Carbon footprint is the amount of carbon dioxide that is released into the atmosphere as a result of the activities of an individual, organization, or community.
According to reports by the United Nation, more than 50 percent of Nigerian communities still use firewood for cooking despite the health risks. This is inclusive of urban areas where firewood and charcoal cooking are used to save cost of cooking gas, especially when the food is in a large quantity. This shows that the Nigerian government still has a lot of work to do if it will achieve net-zero carbon emission by 2060.
COP26 is the world’s most significant summit on climate change.
COP26 is the most recent annual UN climate change conference hosted in the UK between November 1-12, 2021 in partnership with Italy. COP stands for Conference of the Parties. The summit was attended by the countries that signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which was a treaty that came into force in 1994. The UNFCCC is an international environmental treaty to combat dangerous human interference with the climate system by stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere.
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