Africa can benefit more from Energy Transition – Osinbajo
Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has said that African countries will benefit more in the call for energy transition if they stop seeing themselves as the victims and take advantage of the huge inherent potential to build a future that it truly deserves.
Africa, he noted, has all the required natural resources to determine its paths towards cleaner energy.
Speaking at the ongoing Nigeria International Energy Summit, NIES, on Tuesday in Abuja, Prof Osinbajo also noted that Africa cannot accept some of the position as have been offered by some of the advanced countries that gas is one of the energy products that should be defunded or that gas projects should be defunded in order to enable a faster progress towards renewable transition.
The VP said that African countries would benefit more in the search of cleaner energy and should begin to determine how the goal could be achieved.
Osinbajo argued that the quest for a green energy ought to begin from low emission countries, which are mostly in Africa.
“In the last few years, I have had the privilege of chairing our government’s energy transition working group and in that capacity, in working with a strong inter-ministerial team, several energy sector players, many of whom are in this room, it has become increasingly clear to me that Nigeria has a crucial and strategic role in delivering the sustainable energy future that Africa and indeed the world must have in the next few years.
“But what Is that future? Let me say first what it is not.
“It must not be a future where Africa remains at the bottom of the food chain in a brave new world of sustainable energy, certainly not. But we must admit that today, we have the largest number of individuals without access to power, the highest number of people without access to clean cooking fuel, and we need rapid industrialisation to get millions of our people out of poverty. And we must do all of this without worsening the global warming situation.
“It is our nation and continent that will drive the next stage of global economic progress. And we can do so by becoming the first truly growing civilization by first recognising the opportunity and intentionally developing all our potential around our natural resources, including the natural gas of course, solar and bio fuels.
“We must in particular leverage on our renewable energy potential, work actively on green technologies, carbon removal. And we have a young and resourceful workforce that can enable that to happen very quickly. And quite frankly, it is the energy sector working with the government that can muster the human and material resources to move the nation on this kind of ambition.
“There is no question in my mind that Africa is the place where we can sensibly and economically go ahead with green civilization. Nowhere else has that potential. The reason why that is so is because we have the lowest emissions today compared to everywhere else in the world, and because possibly, we have some of the largest natural resources that will aid that journey, we can do much more, and we can be much more effective in developing our own agenda for a green future that will benefit the world much more than starting that journey elsewhere.
“We must not see Africa as the victims and we must not continue to input them as victims in this whole process of the journey towards sustainable energy future, we can in fact become the principal players,” he said.
Prof. Osinbajo also argued that there is a need for some clarity as to where we are in the transition journey, and what we need to be doing, because there are two existential prices for us Africans and of course our own country Nigeria.
Gas, for Africa, is the future.
He stated that, “The reason why gas is the future is not just because we have such huge amounts of gas reserve, it is also because it is possibly the only clean cooking option for us. And clean cooking is an important aspect of the entire clean energy agenda.
“It is crucial, we cannot, and we will not, we in this part of the world cannot do without it. LPG is crucial for clean cooking. Even when we talk about renewable energy, we think in terms of LPG and all the other three cooking options.
“The first of course is global warming and all its implications, the second is the lack of energy access; the energy poverty that we have which also results in millions of our people being poor.
“So there is no question at all that for us in this part of the world, both must go simultaneously. We must think in terms of transition to cleaner fuel; renewable energy, and also access to power so that we can have access to development for our people and that’s why many of us in this room will agree that gas must remain a transition fuel.
“Our energy transition plan is bold and innovative, it calls for the ramping up of solar cells and we are going to be doing about 5.3 gigawatts per year until 2060, that is the plan, and we think that this plan is achievable. The production of over 6 billion litres of bio fuels annually to green as it is the path to e-mobility and the transition of at least 2 million Nigerian households annually to cleaner cooking fuel such as LPG, and electricity every single year,” he added.
The VP used the opportunity to declare open the exhibition stands and also went round each of the stands where new innovations from the various oil and gas companies were on display.
