Africa’s installed capacity
of power is 90GW. That is about the equivalent to Germany’s installed
capacity from wind and solar sources alone. This tells two major
stories; Africa is actually more power poor than it is poor in other
instances when compared with other countries – before you even begin to
do a country by country comparison between an average African country
and say a European country or even a South East Asian one. It helps to
bring it back home quickly: according to mecometer.com, Nigeria’s
installed capacity is 5.9GW (2013 numbers) while the same list places
South Africa at 44GW. In fact, when you take away South Africa’s numbers
from that of the other sub-Saharan African countries, what you have is
an entirely dark reality. More than anything else, Africa has an energy
challenge; in Nigeria, it appears we have now finally realised this and
for once, the Nigerian masses are actually demanding power more than
they have done in a long while.
This has spurred a lot of
initiatives and commitments from the Nigerian government. The most
bizarre of the lot has to be the now advanced plans for nuclear energy.
Note that Nigeria is essentially looking to derive its future energy
from a source that is actually being phased out by the likes of Japan,
Austria, Belgium, Philippines, New Zealand (some 90 per cent of its
energy mix is via renewables – and Germany. While many countries
initially considered phasing out nuclear power generation, the Fukushima
Daiichi nuclear disaster accelerated commitments. This actually further
spurred investments into renewable energy. By 2022, Germany intends to
have closed all its nuclear plants and does not intend to generate any
more power via this source. The German Energiewende is
essentially a commitment towards phasing out nuclear power by 2022 and a
correlational development of renewable energies in the power sector.
A recent study trip to
Germany showed why this commitment was not just about energy of itself
but the source of the energy. The visit to Lusatia was the most telling.
“God created Lusatia, the devil put the Lignite beneath its soil” is a
Sorbian proverb. The proverb derives its essence from the unwholesome
and unfortunate reality of lignite mining. Lignite mining is quite
expensive. Beyond the cost of investment, there is the environmental
cost, let alone the carbon footprint. For instance, the price of water
in Berlin is apparently set to increase by 30 per cent because of new
water treatments necessitated by coal mining. There is the cost of
displaced people as the mining area is not habitable. Today, billions of
dollars have already been invested in turning old mining sites into
artificial lakes. It will take years before these artificial lakes
themselves get to support life because of their understandably high
acidic content. Coal is an essential source of energy globally – it
provides about 40 per cent of the world’s total electricity, it is also
responsible for some 39 per cent of the world’s total CO2 emissions.
China’s deadly air pollution has more to do with coal mining than
anything else. Coal mining has come at a great cost to the world.
Nigeria is now vigorously pursuing coal as one of its sources of power.
This is understandable because two factors make it a rational pursuit;
Nigeria has a vast deposit of unexplored coal and the country is power
poor. That Nigeria is in pursuit of coal mining to power its economy
should not be an issue, at least not as much an issue as whether Nigeria
knows exactly what it is getting into.
We must weigh all the costs
from the beginning. A lot of communities where coal mining has since
stopped are still paying some of these costs. We must also commit to an
energy plan that captures our energy mix on a decade-by-decade basis. On
this one, it would help to plan backwards. For instance, what sort of
energy mix do we want by 2050? That answer will determine the steps we
intend to take towards that. It will inform our investment priorities in
the different energy sources available to us. Renewables now have an
increased energy efficiency and there has been a telling increase in the
adoption of renewable energy in Nigeria – especially in off grid
communities – but we need to do more. There is no gainsaying that the
energy of the future is renewable energy. We are seeing the consequences
of climate change even in our own country –there is a telling
correlation between Lake Chad losing some 90 per cent of its water
content and the increase in violence in that region. When resources like
vegetation are lost to desertification, there is often a telling
increase in violence. The herdsmen challenge is a telling consequence of
climate change.
Recent international meetings
have shown that governments around the world have now fully come to the
acceptance that we must do better with the management of our
environment. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that power
generation from nuclear plants and coalmines will be anachronistic by
2050, or 2080 at most. The signs are there. If Nigeria is not planning
an energy mix of 2050 and beyond built on renewables, then we are
planning to again be part of the chasing pack on that front when that
future comes. And it will come soon enough.
One did a round of travelling
within and outside Nigeria stating that if the country’s oil does not
dry up, the price of oil will certainly plunge due mostly to the
improved energy efficiency of machines, investments in shale oil and
renewables. Four years on, that happened really quickly. There was even
an “expert” who said at the time, “the price of oil will remain high for
many years to come.” We cannot commit to power generation projects with
this ever present “low hanging fruit” mentality, our plans must be
holistic and we must have the future in mind. We are where we are today
as a country because those who led us here hardly thought of the future;
we continue to pay for the seeds of corruption and lack of discretion
of years past. If we miss it today, our next generation and that after
them will pay. The present reality of every country you see today was
not determined today,it was determined in years past.
Every decision comes with a
cost; even renewables have their own challenges – complaints against the
use of farmlands as solar farms persist and the efficiency of renewable
energy products are only two of those. The most important thing is to
lay all the costs and benefits – including remote and immediate ones –
on the table and then decide which we can afford, not only in terms of
naira and kobo but also in terms of what we end up doing to the
environment and the people affected. The Niger Delta will battle
environmental issues long after the last drop of oil is taken off the
ground. Did we for instance factor the cost of the clean-up in the
contracts we signed with these oil companies several years ago? We must
do better now!
I believe in creation. When
God created the world, He started out by creating Light. This is very
instructive. Light/Power is the foundation of development. No country
has ever attained development without generating the necessary power
needed to drive its industries and economy. Nigeria must commit to
developing its power sector but whatever we do, we must do it with the
future in mind. If we don’t, we will be paying more tomorrow for the
gains we assume we will be making today, even if we pretend these gains
are without dangerous and deadly costs. About time a robust conversation
on Nigeria’s energy mix of the future got started. We don’t have to
wait till we start doing 40GW before deciding the sort of distribution
by source we want the power to come from. The business of power is
everyone’s business.
Source: Africanliberty.org
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