The Federal Government has stated that it anticipates the renewable energy sector to contribute roughly 9,000 Megawatts of power supply to the nation by the year 2030 as part of the overall plan to address energy poverty in Nigeria.
This was disclosed by the Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, on Wednesday at the opening of a summit on accelerated scale up of renewable and distributed energy resources in Nigeria organized by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission in Abuja, according to Vanguard.
According to Adelabu, the government is committed to making sure that businesses and other institutions have access to a reasonably priced and dependable power supply.
He said “It is disheartening that for decades, Nigerians have been grappling with the challenges of unreliable grid supply with frequent power outages and load shedding severely impacting businesses, industries, and households.
“The lack of grid reliability has hampered economic productivity and deters foreign investment thereby exacerbating unemployment and economic stagnation. We are determined to end that.”
Adelabu stressed that “despite the challenges we face, we are committed to sustaining efforts to de-risk renewable energy generation through the programs such as the Interconnected Mini-Grid Acceleration Scheme (IMAS), with technical support from EU and the German government, which is expected to catalyze the deployment of 23 mini-grids across 11 states of the federation to serve over 138,000 Nigerians.
“Nigeria’s commitments to developing renewable energy”. peaking earlier, the Chairman of NERC, Engr. Sanusi Garba, said te push to scale up renewable eergy supply would ensure that rural communities were quickly connected to modern sources of electricity.
Meanwhile, Godfrey Ogbemudia, the European Union Delegation in Nigeria, said the EU will spend an additional 100 million euros between 2021 and 2027 to provide an additional 400MW from renewable sources to supply electricity to approximately five million Nigerians. The EU had already spent about 200 million euros funding various programs in the power sector between 2008 and 2020.
“The EU has partnered with Nigeria in promoting the adoption of renewable energy in its energy system since 2008, committing approximately EUR 200 million grants until 2020 on various projects focusing on policy, regulations, building the capacity of market participants, and facilitating access to finance in both public and private sectors. As of 2021, we have renewed our efforts to raise our funding further with EUR 100 million primarily through innovative financing, technical assistance, and energy infrastructure projects.
“This will translate into some 400MW of new renewable energy capacity to be installed by 2027, benefiting over five million Nigerians, saving approximately 500,000 tonnes of CO2”, he added.
Nigeria, a country of more than 200 million people, continues to grapple with an intermittent power supply, leaving millions of its people living in complete darkness.
