Research Document: Framing Nigeria’s Energy Transition Strategy: Imperative of an Overarching Policy Direction

Posted Wed, Nov 29, 2023 10:48 AM

At COP26, Nigeria’s delegation to the climate conference in Glasgow led by President Muhammadu Buhari expressed the country’s firm commitment to energy transition. Also, President Buhari highlighted the importance of global support to enable Nigeria and other developing countries to meet their climate obligations. The 2021 updated NationallyDetermined Contributions (NDC) report built on the points raised by Nigeria at COP26 and elaborated on the prospects and challenges of energy transition for developing a nation such as Nigeria, which is facing significant social and economic challenges. Additionally, the Nigerian Energy Transition Plan (NETP) was launched in 2022. It enumerates the potential advantages of the energy transition, particularly in bridging the energy poverty gap, potential for new jobs to be created, attraction of new investments, and dealing with climate change.

Conversely, the two documents (the Updated NDC and NETP) similarly underscored the fact that Nigeria would require $10 billion worth of investments annually or $1.9 trillion of new spending from 2021 to 2060 to enable the country to make the necessary adjustments and funds the current transition plan. However, these very good initial actions appear to have fallen short on some important points crucial to Nigeria’s domestic or local realities. The existing documents and reports have not critically examined some innocuous adverse impacts of the expected decline of the traditional energy sector together with these stated demands of energy transition and the challenges of revenue decline from oil due to the shrinking market for oil globally. Also, the extant instruments do not seem to have critically analysed Nigeria’s technology strategy. This Policy Brief examines the role of an energy transition policy in harmonising the various plans and identifying possible inward-looking transition technology strategies for Nigeria.