Adelabu: We’ve identified $23bn investment opportunities in Nigeria’s energy transition plan

Adebayo Adelabu, minister of power, says about $23 billion in investment opportunities has been identified for in-country projects that are directly tied to Nigeria’s energy transition plan.

Adelabu disclosed this on Monday at the 2nd German-Nigerian symposium on green hydrogen.

The minister said the opportunities would not only provide power for economic development but would also result in significant net job creation of up to 340,000 by 2030.

He said the ETP would also create up to 840,000 jobs by 2060, driven mainly by power, cooking, and transport sectors, adding that gas would play a critical role as a transition fuel in Nigeria’s net-zero pathway.

“The ETP creates significant investment opportunities such as the establishment and expansion of industries related to solar energy, green hydrogen, and electric vehicles,” Adelabu said.

“$1.9 trillion is required to get Nigeria to Net Zero by 2060, including $410 billion above usual spending. This additional cost translates to about $10bn annually.

“A $23bn investment opportunity has been identified based on current in-country programmes and projects that are directly related to the just energy transition.”

On his part, Ogbonnaya Orji, the executive secretary of Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), said gas has the ability to produce blue hydrogen, which would be helpful as the country moves towards cleaner energy sources — even though it is not as clean as green hydrogen.

“And sadly, Nigeria is still battling to put in place and embrace efficient gas commercialisation and utilisation policy. For instance, NEITI’s recent report disclosed a total unremitted revenue of over $8.2bn. These revenues arose from liabilities of government agencies and oil/gas companies,” he said.

“A breakdown of the unremitted payments in our report showed outstanding gas royalty of $559.8m and another unremitted sum of $828.8m from unpaid gas flare penalty which indicated that more gas was flared during the period than utilised, posing serious dangers to the global zero emissions agenda.”

He said NEITI is working closely with the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) on its ongoing gas commercialisation policy to ensure transparent and effective implementation to reverse the trend of gas flare.