…As FG plans to crash cost of renewable energy supply
The World Resource Institute, WRI, says over 85m Nigerians do not have access to electricity, making it number one country in the world with citizens living without electricity provision.
The Lead of the Energy Access Explorer at the World Resources Institute, Dimitris Mendis disclosed this at a two day Open Source in Energy Access Symposium organized by Clean Tech Hub in Abuja.
He said Nigeria is the number one country in the whole world when it comes to people that have no access to electricity with close to half of it’s citizens wallowing in darkness.
With this, Mendis said provision of modern healthcare, modern agriculture, modern education and modern livelihoods become a mirage in the country.
In order to address this challenge, he said what the country should do is “to be able to understand where these communities, where these underserved communities are and come out with a marshal plan to provide them access in order to bridge the wide gap.
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According to him, ‘‘once we identify and map these communities, we need to assess the best ways to supply energy to these communities. Because energy is critical for socioeconomic development; energy for health, energy for education, energy for agriculture, for livelihoods.’’
He said WRI is pioneering a close collaboration between the Rural Electrification Agency and a number of other stakeholders across numerous countries to develop a digital public good, which is essential to bridge the energy access gap.
‘‘We call this the Energy Access Explorer. It supports with integrated and inclusive energy planning, where are the unserved communities and how shall they be best served.
‘‘And it supports also with effective data management and data governance. This is not a challenge for a single organization. This is a cross-sectoral, cross-thematic challenge.
‘‘So we need to bring together stakeholders from various organizations, key data providers, whether it’s the Ministry of Power and the Royal Electrification Agency, whether it’s line ministries in health,
agriculture, environment, finance, bureau of statistics, subnational governments, clean energy enterprises, development organizations’’
On how this particular infrastructure, which is called the Energy Access Explorer, can support integrated and inclusive energy planning, he said governments are utilizing this open source infrastructure to identify areas where access to energy should be expanded.
‘‘Based on a data-informed approach, we are informed by data. Better data leads to better insights. And better insights can lead to better decisions’’.
The CEO of the Ennexus Foundation, one of the organizers of the Symposium, … advised Nigerian companies and government to collaborate to address the energy challenges and provide energy services.
He called on them to leverage open source platforms available that can help in managing, visualizing and structure their information for seamless sharing in the ecosystem.
Also speaking on energy access, the Director for Energy, Transportation, and Infrastructure at the National Council on Climate Chang, Michael Ivenso said government the current administration is seeking to solve the problem,. particularly for Small and Medium Scale Enterprises, SMEs through the provision of incentive to importers of renewable energy goods and services. Such incentive according to him include reduction of costs of importation of goods and establish opportunities for local manufacturing.
Ivenso, who joined his voice in calling for collaboration between public and private sector establishments noted that government one doesn’t have all the answers but needs support of the private sector to succeed.
“We are looking for this additional support and resources from the private sector to help us come together and co-create something that works for everybody.
“The reason why we’re here today really amplifies what you just talked about. And I mentioned the incentive the government is providing to importers of renewable energy goods and services is to reduce costs and to establish opportunities for local manufacturing.
“So that way, the exposure of local manufacturers and service providers to foreign exchange is actually elevated, significantly reduced.
“So one dollars to N500 today, tomorrow is N1,500, you can’t plan. And your capacity to produce based on this fluctuating thing really becomes hampered. And so if you have local manufacturing, then you have all your inputs here locally. Except maybe for a few things. And so incentivizing local manufacturing is extremely important. Creating and crafting financial products and services that allows the common man, including small businesses and homes, to uptake renewable energy and pay over time.”