Achieving Sustainable Development Goals in Nigeria’s power sector: assessment of transition pathways

Abstract

Nigeria is Africa's largest economy and home to approximately 10% of the unelectrified population of Sub-Saharan Africa. In 2017, 77 million Nigerians or 40% of the population had no access to affordable, reliable and sustainable electricity. In practice, diesel-and petrol-fuelled back-up generators supply the vast majority of electricity in the country. In Nigeria's nationally-determined contribution (NDC) under the Paris Agreement, over 60% of the greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) reductions are foreseen in the power sector. The goal of this study is to identify and critically examine the pathways available to Nigeria to meet its 2030 electricity access, renewables and decarbonization goals in the power sector. Using published data and stakeholder interviews, we build three potential scenarios for electrification and growth in demand, generation and transmission capacity. The demand assumptions incorporate existing knowledge on pathways for electrification via grid extension, mini-grids and solar home systems (SHS). The supply assumptions are built upon an evaluation of the investment pipeline for generation and transmission capacity, and possible scale-up rates up to 2030. The results reveal that, in the most ambitious Green Transition scenario, Nigeria meets its electricity access goals, whereby those connected to the grid achieve a Tier 3 level of access, and those served by sustainable off-grid solutions (mini-grids and SHS) achieve Tier 2. Decarbonization pledges would be surpassed in all three scenarios but renewable energy goals would only be partly met. Fossil fuel-based back-up generation continues to play a substantial role in all scenarios. The implications and critical uncertainties of these findings are extensively discussed.Key policy insights . The 2030 electricity mix for Nigeria varies across the scenarios presented, with the most ambitious scenario achieving electricity access goals and partly meeting renewable energy goals. . All three scenarios surpass the decarbonization targets of Nigeria's NDC for the power sector. . The transformation of the power sector relies on a wide range of financial, policy and enabling environment-related conditions taking place in the near-term, some of which are in turn strongly influenced by larger political economy realities. . Fossil fuel-based back-up generation plays a substantial role in all scenarios. Data availability for this technology remains a significant source of uncertainty. ARTICLE HISTORY

A Critical Review on Electric Power Sector for Sustainable Energy Development in Nigeria

“…Roche et al [11] conducted an assessment of transition pathways to achieve sustainable development goals in Nigeria's energy sector. The aim of this study was to identify and critically examine the pathways available for Nigeria to meet its targets for access to electricity, renewable energy and decarbonization by 2030 in the energy sector.…”

A cross-sectoral integrated assessment of alternatives for climate mitigation in Madagascar

“…Since cooking constitutes the main final energy use in the residential sector, data on cooking stoves has been updated. Costs are based on Fernandes and Keemink (2017) and ethanol stoves are included as an option, given reported efforts on expanding the use of liquid biofuels for cooking (CCM, 2019;Project Gaia, 2019). On the basis of air quality concerns related to solid biomass use in the residential sector, we assume that its consumption steadily decreases, down to 75% and 30% of cooking demand in 2030 and 2050 respectively.…”

“…So far, few studies have focused on the assessment of NDCs proposed by African countries, and most of them lack an integrated approach that evaluates mitigation options under a cost-optimal perspective (Ouedraogo, 2019;Roche et al, 2019;van Zyl et al, 2018). Given the intimate link between land-use change and the energy sector, and their respective contributions to Madagascar's GHG emission reduction ambitions, its NDC targets and their implications must be assessed from a holistic perspective.…”

A sustainable energy portfolio for Greater Kampala Metropolitan Area towards the mid-century

“…Therefore, in light of sustainability, hydropower and solar energy have been proven to be major supplies in the sustainable renewable mix, and their optimization in the global primary energy is considered essential to the United Nations’ SDG7 ( Büyüközkan et al., 2018 ; Ioannidis et al., 2019 ; Bogdanov et al., 2021 ). Hydropower technologies are fundamental in the realization of the SDG-7 goal ( Yetano Roche et al., 2020 ; Caster et al., 2020 ; Elavarasan et al., 2020 ; Eras-Almeida et al., 2020 ). And this is because when appropriately designed and applied, hydropower is an affordable, reliable, and sustainable electrical power production technology with near-zero carbon emissions to the atmosphere ( Siri et al., 2020 ; Yoosef Doost et al., 2020 ; Majid, 2020 ).…”