Energy experts have said that Nigeria’s transition goal will be accomplished if it could overcome financial, implementation and workforce development barriers.
They made this known in Abuja at the 77th Power Dialogue event themed, “Post COP27: Lessons and opportunities for Nigeria.”
The Power Dialogue is a monthly public discourse series that aims to share information and pragmatic ideas, advocate policy positions and highlight investment opportunities in the Nigerian power sector.
“The major challenge here is financing the country’s energy transition plan,” said Barka Sajou, executive director, Technical Services at Rural Electrification Agency (REA).
He said breaking the financial barrier will determine the trajectory of the country’s goal by 2030 and 2060.
“We have the dual problem of energy and the climate crisis,” said Sajou. “I hope we get on track.”
The Nigeria Energy Transition Plan is meant to raise $410 billion above business as usual to meet the country’s commitment.
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Globally, $32 trillion is expected to be raised between now and 2030 and a huge portion of that amount is supposed to come from the private sector.
“Mobilizing finance is actually very key,” said Suleiman Babamanu, Nigeria program director, Rocky Mountain institute.
He also said that Nigeria should be going past the conceptual stage right now of the energy transition.
“We should be over and going into radical implementation because we cannot always be talking about pilots.
“We’ve been stuck in this pilot phase of either trying out a technology or trying out a business model or trying out a financing mechanism and it has not allowed us to actually make progress in terms of the kind of scale that we want to see for energy transition,” he said.
Meanwhile, Suleiman Babamanu, Nigeria program director of Rocky Mountain Institute, said that workforce development is as important as the two factors outlined.
“We need to ensure that we are creating an opportunity for people to get into new jobs.
“In terms of just transition, they’re the most important stakeholders,” he said. “That is why workforce development is actually very key.”
Babamanu said that apart from new jobs, the energy transition is also pushing for the transmission of jobs from other industries into clean energy.
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