By Ikenna Omeje
Climate change has become a topical issue at both local and international conferences, summits, and conventions, forcing more countries to roll out stringent policies to curtail carbon emissions. However, to achieve a sustainable outcome, policies and views on the energy transition should reflect global energy and economic realities surrounding both oil-producing and consuming nations, the Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Mele Kyari, has said.
In an op-ed titled, “Perspective on Energy Transition” in the Atlantic Council’s “The 2022 Global Energy Agenda”, released recently, Kyari argued that the oil industry is a key contributor to the global economy as it guarantees energy supply to industrialized nations and serves as a source of revenue for countries like Nigeria.
He noted that beyond lowering global carbon footprint, the oil industry must also sustain energy security and drive prosperity, particularly in developing countries where rapid population growth remains a concern.
“World leaders, leading institutions, scientific communities, businesses, and organizations are leading global solidarity in action against climate change and its impact on life on earth. The call to end the use of fossil fuels in order to reduce global CO2 emissions and achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 is becoming louder, and the coalition is big, but greater synergy is required to achieve sustainable outcomes,” Kyari said.
“This requires the global oil industry to play more than one important role; to lower the global carbon footprint, sustain global energy security, and drive prosperity especially in developing countries where population growth remains well above global average.
“In most known instances, the oil industry has remained one of the major contributors to global economic growth, by guaranteeing energy flow to industrialized regions and revenue and taxes to oil-producing countries like Nigeria.
“These dual roles cannot be simply ignored in our quest to address the impact of carbon emissions on the environment. Policies and views on the energy transition should therefore reflect global energy and economic realities surrounding both oil-producing and consuming nations.”
The NNPC boss stated that as a national oil company, the NNPC believes inclusive policy actions that guarantee access to finance and low-carbon technology are key to sustaining global energy security and equitable growth as the world transits to a carbon-neutral economy, adding that its strategy for achieving carbon neutrality is centered around three principles: adoption of low-carbon technology across our operations, deepening natural gas utilization to reduce energy poverty, and investment in clean energy technology and products.
“We believe these principles are most likely to support a smoother transition to a carbon-neutral economy without compromising access to the cheap and readily available energy resources that will be required to address energy poverty and support country-specific development priorities.
“Slowing down investment in hydrocarbon ventures may provide the right incentive for the energy transition, but it cannot guarantee global energy security in the near future, especially as energy demands grow faster than renewable energy maturation.
“The world, therefore, needs to adopt a more inclusive consensus, one that considers complementarities and trade-offs between and within policies and policy objectives.
“As a commercially driven entity, we are leveraging the current industry dynamics to diversify and grow our portfolio in order to maintain relevance in the global energy market. Additionally, we are reassessing the brown and green assets for our Carbon Budget and environmental credentials as part of our transition to an energy company of global excellence,” he stated.
The 2022 Global Energy Agenda details a more pessimistic outlook on the promise of the energy transition, as respondents reckoned with concerns old and new. Experts offered ways forward in the face of hazards like Russian aggression, supply-demand mismatch, and a transition that threatens to leave the global poor behind. The inaugural edition of the Global Energy Agenda was released in January 2021.
