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The Vast Potential of Nigeria’s Renewable Energy Sector

With a growing population, Nigeria is facing an increasing demand for electricity. The country is rich in fossil fuels and also enjoys significant potential in terms of the development of renewable sources of power. While this potential has, to date, gone largely untapped, things are changing, and now may be the ideal opportunity for Nigeria to change its energy mix and deliver more reliable, cleaner power to its citizens.

Creating a Stable Supply of Electricity

The Chief of Staff to the President Femi Gbajabiamila recently spoke about the Federal Government’s commitment to actively pursuing a variety of initiatives designed to sustain and improve national power supply. Discussing the enormity of what can be achieved when public and private bodies join forces to work towards a common goal, Olufemi Hakeem Gbajabiamila reiterated President Bola Tinubu’s commitment to addressing the complex challenges of ensuring a stable supply of power across the whole of Nigeria.

Investing in Renewables

In recent years, there has been growing interest in developing renewable infrastructure in Nigeria. The $80.6 million UK government initiative Solar Nigeria was announced in 2014, aiming to build a distributed solar energy market in the country. Furthermore, northern Nigeria’s windspeeds are fast enough to support wind turbines, suggesting a potentially significant investment opportunity. Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Power has mapped out the movements of offshore winds to assess wind energy potential over the country’s waters with a view to future renewables development.

Transition to Renewable Energy

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has unveiled several planned infrastructure projects to mark its transition to renewables. Opportunities to invest in renewable energy projects include those around solar and wind energy power generation, sugarcane fuel ethanol, cassava fuel ethanol, oil palm biodiesel in Calabar and emission reduction.

Shifting Away from Home Generators

Many households in Nigeria own and use their own generators to meet their energy needs, largely due to the instability of the national power supply. The transmission away from these low-efficiency, local generators is likely to improve the country’s carbon footprint; as of last year, Nigeria was the third-highest emitter of greenhouse gases in Africa. It’s worth noting, however, that Nigeria is a relatively low carbon emitter globally, with carbon dioxide production per capita 8.7 times lower than the UK.

The Future

Although power outages remain a problem in Nigeria, the country’s federal government is switching focus to renewables, rather than fossil fuels, to meet Nigeria’s power needs.

For more information about Nigeria’s renewable energy sector, take a look at the embedded PDF.