Nigeria Requires $10bn Annual Investments For Energy Transition Till 2060 –Shettima

Vice President Kashim Shettima has said funding the energy transition in the country requires investments of over $10 billion per year till 2060.

According to the vice president, majority of the money would necessarily come from the private sector, including through initiatives to access high -integrity carbon markets.

Shettima who stated this at a ‘Symposium on Energy Transition in an Oil- dependent Economy’, organised by Development Agenda Magazine in Abuja yesterday, however said Nigeria was up to the challenge.

He said the administration of President Bola Tinubu was willing to take difficult decisions while the rich resource base and depth of  human capital in the country would ensure Nigeria’s success in that regard.

Represented by his special adviser on power and infrastructure, Sadiq Wanka, Shettima said the energy transition plan in Nigeria balanced the need for the country to rapidly industrialise, develop and address critical environmental challenges that are not just a distant concept, but an immediate reality.

The vice president said the energy transition plan is very clear on the need for Nigeria to become a net-zero economy by 2060 but it does so with the critical realisation that the country must maximise her petroleum resources in the short term to provide the base load energy which would turbocharge the economy.

“In particular, there is a strong government drive to push hydrocarbon investments up to 2030 before a gradual phase-out post 2030.

In 2021, Nigeria declared the 2020s the Decade of Gas.

“At the heart of the Decade of Gas is improving fiscal terms and targeted incentives that would unlock up to 10 billion sef day of gas supply by 2030 to be channeled to serve the power sector, commercial sector and gas-based industries. Critical to this unlock is a focus on non-associated gas which constitutes the lion- share of the over 200 trillion cubic feet of proven gas reserves in the country.

“There have been successful collaborations with multilateral development banks on electrification. The Nigeria Electrification Project supported by the World Bank and African Development Bank connected over 7.5 million Nigerians to electricity through mini-grids and solar home systems and the successor programme, the $750 million Distributed Access through Renewable Energy Scale-up targeting an additional 19.5 million Nigerians is already underway,” he noted.

In his goodwill message, Governor Uba Sani of Kaduna State said Nigeria requires for its growth and development, the delivery of affordable, reliable and sustainable energy for homes and businesses.

Represented by the managing director, Kaduna Power Supply Company, Idris Aminu Idris, Governor Sani said subnational governments have a key role to play in achieving that with a three-way collaboration between the federal government, state governments and the private sector in the attaining a sustainable energy practice.

Publisher of Development Agenda Magazine, Paddy Ezeala, said as the world sought to pivot away from fossil fuels towards less polluting cleaner energy sources, countries of the global south and their citizens are palpably disadvantaged – either as inheritors of the burden of extraction or of lack of resources and technology to compete.

“This symposium will therefore explore factors and opportunities for mitigating the expected negative effects of government’s energy transition programmes on Nigerians, including how to ensure that impacted communities are helped and how to secure justice for residents of those communities,” he added.