31st May, 2012
With only about 47 per cent of Nigerians having access to electricity at the moment and a daily production wobbling between 3000 and 4000 megawatts, there is a need to embrace renewable energy.
The actual available capacity of electricity in Nigeria at the moment swings between 3,000 and 4,000 megawatts out of an installed capacity of 8,000 megawatts.
This is against a current demand of 16,000 megawatts and a plan to produce 190,000 megawatts by the year 2030 according to the Federal Government projections.
Despite granting 20 Integrated Power Plant licences with a capacity for additional 10,000 megawatts, none of the projects have been realised years after and Nigeria has remained mainly in darkness.
The grim picture of the energy situation in the country therefore calls for innovative options to meet the demand and renewable energy seems to be the way forward.
We agree with Mr. Lawal Gada, Manager at the Bank of Industry and the United Nations Development Programme project on renewable energy, that the option to close the wide gap in Nigeria is by generating energy from sources that can be replenished such as the wind and the sun.
According to Gada, renewable energy has the capacity to generate about 600,000 megawatts of electricity in Nigeria. Yet, it contributes less than 6 per cent to the energy supply at the moment.
The will to embrace renewable energy still seems distant from the Federal Government priorities with a recent laughable disclosure by the Minister of Mines and Steel Development, Mr. Musa Muhammad Sada, that Nigeria would generate 30 percent of its electricity from coal by 2015.
We also agree with the experts and analysts who converged in Lagos, southwest Nigeria, last week, for a two-day training on Renewable Energy Finance for Microfinance Institutions that conventional energy with its high cost of exploration, distribution, pollution and risks must be replaced by renewable energy and not energy from coal.
Renewable energy is generated from the sun, the wind and other natural sources and constitutes about 16 percent of global energy at the moment. It is cost effective and environmentally friendly. It can also be distributed with ease.
In rural Kenya, about 30,000 small solar panels of renewable energy are said to already be in use. These panels power household light, system cooker and lamps. The same panels can be used in rural Nigeria, where at least 65 percent of Nigerians live.
The lack of constant electricity has crippled the Nigerian economy and rendered many Nigerians jobless. This is unacceptable when there is alternative. All that is needed is funding from the Federal Government. We call on the government to demonstrate the political will in taking Nigeria out of darkness by embracing renewable energy.