Monday, 20 May, 2024
Nigeria is considered as the African powerhouse and is among countries with a wide variety of different natural resources. The country is richly endowed with natural resources ranging from industrial metals to various precious stones such as Barites, Gypsum, Kaolin and Marble (1). The country is widely known for its vast hydrocarbons’ wealth. Nigeria is home to significant deposits of coal, iron ore, lead, limestone, tin and zinc. Just as importantly, it has rich land and water resources. The oil and gas sector has been a major source of income for the government, accounting for over 90 percent of Nigeria’s total exports and about 70 percent of government revenue (2). Nigeria’s GDP stands at ~USD 441 billion in 2021 (3).
Majority of power generation in the country is attributed to natural gas (85 percent) followed by hydropower (15 percent) as of 2022. Nigeria has plans to increase the centralized capacity to 42 GW with 8 GW utility scale solar, 14 GW gas-fired generation and 6.3 GW of decentralized renewable energy capacity by 2030 (4).
Image Source: freepik
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Nigeria is aiming to be carbon neutral by 2060 with ~USD 1.9 trillion spending estimate. Nigeria is planning to build hydrogen market post 2030 with blue hydrogen as a potential fuel of the future (5).
Nigeria is well positioned to enter the hydrogen economy, as sub-Saharan Africa has a high technical potential to produce inexpensive green hydrogen, according to analysis by GIZ. Its hydrogen product is likely to be green, as cost parity of green with gray and blue forms of hydrogen could occur as early as 2025, largely because the latter remain exposed to natural gas prices (6).
Nigeria's Hydrogen Policy is still in formulation/discussion stage, will be available in the future.
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Solar CSP potential - ~89 GW
The potential for concentrated solar power (CSP) is also very significant with a potential of approximately 88.7 GW and is mostly located in northern Nigeria, where the direct normal irradiance is highest.
Solar PV potential - 210 GW
Nigeria has high solar resource potential characterized by an average annual global horizontal irradiation ranging between 1 600 kilowatt hours per square meter (kWh/m2) and 2 200 kWh/m2 with the highest values (greater than 2 000 kWh/m2) located in the northern part of the country.
Wind Power potential - 3.2 GW
The country has moderate wind potential with average wind speeds at 10 metres (m) height ranging between 2.1 m/second (s) and 8 m/s with the highest values (greater than 7 m/s) located in the northern part of the country. The target of the National Renewable Energy Action Plan (NREAP) is to achieve 0.17 GW of grid-connected wind capacity by 2020 and 0.8 GW by 2030.
Hydropower potential - 27.5 GW
Nigeria has a large hydro potential of around 24 GW and a small hydro potential of about 3.5 GW. This potential for the most part is yet to be exploited.
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