Mass production of biogas digesters to generate electricity and gas cookers would greatly crash anthropogenic (human caused) methane emissions which account for almost 50% of methane emissions.
Prototypes have already been produced with about N2m each (PH price) but mass production is expected to crash the cost to family income levels.
Should the technology be adopted, most homes, estates, and communities would simply have small power supply systems outside the national grid.
This is why governments in the Niger Delta have been told to join the war against human-induced methane emission to save the oil region.
Experts from various research centres who met in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, under the auspices of the African Initiative for Transparency, Accountability, and Responsible Leadership (AfriTAL) and ECOSGF and SDN harped on the need to take collective actions against methane emission from human causes.
They said biogas digesters will convert waste to power generation and create huge wealth in the region. Samples of digesters were presented by researchers.
Leading the discussion, Brown Louis Ogbeifun, executive director of AfriTAL, said the search is for the possibility of communities redesigning their septic tanks and soak-away systems in such a way that they become a veritable source if electricity and cooking gas so that waste turns o wealth and reduce the raging environmental threat.
He said: “Methane emissions degrade the environment and contribute to human health hazards if not contained.”
Read also: Firms move to convert organic waste into biogas
He said methane has been identified as a potent greenhouse gas contributing significantly to global warming, saying its effects are almost 30 times greater than those of carbon dioxide (Copilot), which makes it an urgent call to action by everybody. “Although methane is very useful and naturally occurring in the atmosphere, it becomes hazardous in high concentrations.”
Summarising the workshop, Ogbeifun said: “We have no control over what government will throw at us, but we do, on what we can do”.
Other experts including Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and the oil and gas sectors reiterated the criticality of partnership. They also emphasized the place of mind-reengineering as the way forward to mitigating methane emissions in Nigeria.
Highlighting some of the actions participants were expected to take to abate methane emissions, Soberekon Afiesimama (PhD), heaped his presentation on ‘Methane Abatement in Nigeria: A Call to Action’ and made a case for financial support for methane reduction projects.
Speaking, Nimi Elele from the Department of Climate Change, Ministry of Environment, stated that going by the Sustainable Development Goal 17, partnership is very key in abating methane emissions in Nigeria.
The workshop had the theme: ‘Methane Abatement in Nigeria: Special Focus on Anthropogenic Sources’, was funded by Trust-Africa.
Christopher Nku, the Project Officer, Environment Desk, Stakeholder Democracy Network (SDN), delivered a goodwill message and noted that while the sources from fossil fuels could be detected and quantified, the anthropogenic sources were yet to be quantified.
Godswill Ukoikpoko (PhD), Director of Veterinary Services, Rivers State Ministry of Agriculture, stressed that efforts should be made to reach out to the new Ministry of Livestock Development created by the FG.
On her part, the Headmistress of the Rivers State University Staff School, Charles Ibifuro, promised to take the message back to her school.
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