Dr. Muntaqa Umar-Sadiq, an aide of the Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, has expressed that for Nigeria to reach a net-zero emissions energy system by 2060, the government needs to deploy an estimated 5.5 Gigawatts of solar capacity to accelerate the energy transition.
Umar-Sadiq, Principal Financial Specialist who leads the Nigeria Energy Transition Unit in the VP’s Office, said this , Tuesday at the Stakeholders’ Dialogue organised by the Renewable Energy Association of Nigeria, REAN, in Abuja.
According to him, there exists a financing gap of about $10billion every year in Nigeria’s quest to achieve the targets in its Energy Transition Plan and for Nigeria to reach a net-zero emissions energy system by 2060, the government needs to deploy an estimated 5.5 Gigawatts of solar capacity at an unprecedented scale.
He said: “Now achieving this net zero plan, we estimate it will cost about $410 billion in excess of business as usual spending. That translates into roughly $10 billion annually as a matter of financing gap.
“The capital expenditure differential largely is focused on infrastructure power, but we are quite excited about the fact that at a portfolio level, we have curated a pipeline of projects as a basis to raise the resources that we will need.”
“And that’s why this conversation is quite important, because of the partnerships around private sources of capital and lower cost of debt as well as some of the off-balance sheet structures that will be required to ramp up the solar capacity that we’re speaking about.” He said.
