Nigeria needs $410 billion to finance its energy transition project – VP Yemi Osinbajo
Yemi Osinbajo, Nigeria’s vice president, has estimated that at least $410 billion will be needed to implement the country’s energy transition strategy.
Osinbajo said this today when virtually launching Nigeria’s Energy Transition Plan (NETP). He added that the necessary spending amounted to around $10 billion annually.
According to him, the $3 billion in annual investments in renewable energy that were documented for all of Africa between 2000 and 2020 are undoubtedly insufficient.
“The plan (NETP) was created with a focus on the provision of energy for development, industrialization, and economic growth in order to address the issues of the energy crisis and climate change and achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 7 by 2030 and net zero by 2060.
According to the vice president, “We anchored the plan on key objectives, including lifting 100 million people out of poverty in a decade, thriving economic growth, providing modern services to the entire population, and managing the expected long-term job loss in the oil sector due to global emissions reductions.”
He noted that the strategy aimed to employ liquefied petroleum gas in the short term to help develop baseload energy capacity and address the country’s clean cooking shortfall.
The plan envisions thriving sectors driven by low-carbon technologies, streets filled with electric cars, and livelihoods made possible by ample and clean energy. According to Yemi Osinbajo, the initiative might result in the creation of 340,000 employment by 2030 and 840,000 jobs by 2060.
The Minister of Finance, Budget, and Planning, Zainab Ahmed, also spoke at the event, which was sponsored by Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL). She remarked that the energy transition plan was quite ambitious and needed donor support.
According to the plan, Nigeria must spend $1.9 trillion up to 2060, including $410 billion more than is necessary for business as usual, Ahmed added. This increased expenditure amounts to $135 billion for the construction of transmission and distribution infrastructure and $150 billion for increasing generation capacity.
“$79 billion will be spent on creating clean cooking solutions, $21 billion on decarbonizing industry, $12 billion on transportation, and another $12 billion on decarbonizing oil and gs. To provide the additional cash needed for the project’s realization, we must raise $10 billion every year until 2060.
The G7 leaders announced a sum of $8.5 million for South Africa’s energy transition away from coal at the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as COP26, because, according to the minister, access to money was a problem.
