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| 3-October-2024 |
Household operational energy comprises by far the largest share of Nigeria’s energy use, and most of it is the combustion of solid biomass for home cooking.
A 2023 report by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), compiled in collaboration with the Energy Commission of Nigeria, provides helpful data on energy consumption patterns.
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| Solar panels being installed. Photo by ISPI On Line |
Of the final energy consumed in Nigeria (that is, energy in all forms, at the point of use, whether biomass, fossil fuels, electricity or commercially-produced heat) nearly 50% goes to residential buildings, followed by transport, industry and commercial uses of energy. (These are 2015 data, but the picture is unlikely to have changed significantly since then).
Agriculture uses a tiny 0.4% of final energy, which reflects very low levels of agricultural mechanisation.
The same report assesses Nigeria’s primary energy supply – that is, “raw” energy products, excluding exports and including imports, before e.g. fuel is burned to produce electricity or heat – as follows:
🔥 Forty-five per cent is from bioenergy, mainly wood collected from forests, charcoal, and animal dung for home cooking. Most of this biomass is collected by families themselves, outside the commercial energy system.
🔥 Forty per cent is from crude oil, 13% from natural gas, 1.2% from hydropower, and about 0.6% from other renewables.
In 2015, Nigeria had less than one gigawatt (GW) of installed solar energy capacity, according to the IRENA report.[1] There was no installed wind capacity. There was 1.9 GW of installed large-scale hydropower capacity, and 0.06 GW of small-scale hydro.
On a per-capita basis, Nigeria’s final energy consumption in 2015 worked out at about 11,700 megajoules (MJ) per person per year. That compares to a per-capita final energy consumption in the UK of about 89,500 MJ per person per year.[2] (These figures exclude the energy embodied in imported manufactured goods – very substantial in the case of the UK.)
For comparison, we can refer to the “contraction and convergence” low-energy development path proposed by Arnalf Grubler and his colleagues, that I have cited in the linked post, Nigeria: meeting the need for housing. The study estimates that worldwide, in 2020, final energy consumption was an average of 120,000 MJ per person per year across the global north, and 37,000 MJ per person per year across the global south, those averages obscuring enormous inequalities of energy consumption between and within countries.
Nigeria’s energy mix reflects a paucity of electricity infrastructure. Only about 60% of Nigeria’s population have access to electricity: 90 million people are without access.
Electricity generation for the Nigerian grid is from gasdominated by gas-fired power stations (86%), with large hydropower plants next in second place (14%).
The grid is highly unreliable. Installed on-grid generation capacity is about 13 GW, but peak generation generally “hovers around 4.5 GW”.
The unreliability is caused by failures in the grid network, which itself lacks the necessary capacity, primarily due to under-investment; by irregularities in the supply of gas, breakdowns of machinery, and seasonal water shortages that impact hydropower. Blackouts are a regular occurrence, lasting for several hours.
In consequence, households and businesses depend heavily on back-up generators using diesel and gasoline. This is why oil comprises such a big share of primary energy supply. Electricity is produced less by the national grid, and more by a distributed system of diesel and gas generators.
The IRENA estimate that about 15–20 gigawatts (GW) of off-grid, fossil-based generator capacity was in place in 2015 (they give both values), although they quote another study putting it as high as 30.5 GW. They think that off-grid gasoline and diesel generators provided about 66 Terawatt hours (TWh) (237 petajoules (PJ)) of primary energy in 2015.
A 2021 Climate Change Policy document from the Nigerian government notes that, so long as the electricity infrastructure remains so unreliable, business growth in Nigeria is a double-edged sword. New businesses provide much-needed employment for a growing population, but they also exacerbate the growth in greenhouse gas emissions.
The same report forecast that greenhouse gas emissions from the industrial sector would rise from 4.2 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (Mt CO2e) in 2010 to perhaps 14.8 Mt CO2e in 2030, in the absence of measures to decarbonise the energy system or improve energy efficiency.
Focusing again on the residential sector, the main user of energy, the illustration above shows how household energy consumption breaks down according to fuel and according to use.
About 65% of household energy consumption goes to cooking, and a similar proportion comes from biomass combustion.
About 10% of household energy consumption goes to water heating, and about another 10% to lighting. That comparatively high last figure reflects the low penetration of modern LED and energy-saving bulbs in Nigeria; most households use incandescent bulbs. The authors further note that most home appliances are very old and inefficient – some of them recycled cast-offs from rich countries.
Only a very small total amount of energy is consumed by households for space conditioning (i.e. heating and cooling): about 2 PJ a year for the whole country, which is barely visible in the graph.
There is considerable spatial heterogeneity in residential energy use across Nigeria. Specifically, there is a large gap in the scale and nature of energy consumption between rural and urban settings.
So, while 60% of Nigeria’s population as a whole has access to electricity, IRENA estimates rural access to electricity at between 25% and 46%, and levels of urban electricity connection at 84% to 90%. Put another way, 54-75% of rural households and 10-16% of urban households lack access to electricity.
The IEA estimates that only about 10% of people in Nigeria have access to clean cooking, i.e. do not rely on biomass fuels and have access to LPG or electricity for cooking. The IRENA cites alternative estimates of 15% (WHO, World Bank) and 18% (Nigerian National Bureau of Statistics). Only about 6% of the rural population have access to clean cooking, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
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| Final energy consumption in residential buildings. Source: IRENA (2023) |
Biomass cooking is extremely damaging to health. According to the IEA, almost 500,000 people died prematurely in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2018 because of cooking with solid biofuels – “a figure that equals the combined death toll of malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS”.
Biomass combustion is also incredibly inefficient. And it is an even more potent source of greenhouse gas emissions than oil. For example, per unit energy released, even well-dried wood releases more CO2 combustion emissions than coal.
A large part of the biomass used in cooking comes from forest wood collection, which also carries a large environmental impact in the form of deforestation and desertification. Additional drivers of deforestation in Nigeria include expansions in agricultural land and commercial logging.
Economically, according to the IEA, cooking with solid biomass further “incurs a considerable cost in terms of time and income”. On average, globally, for those households that use solid biomass fuels, the household dedicates “1.4 hours a day to collecting fuel, a burden borne primarily by women and children”. (See also here.)
The use of solid biofuels for cooking is rising in absolute terms along with Nigeria’s population, even though the proportion of homes dependent on solid biofuels is falling.
The dominance of biomass cooking in Nigeria is clearly an enormous public health problem – and it is the major spur to electrification.
The fact that 60% of people have access to electricity, while only 10% have access to clean cooking, suggests that the barriers to clean cooking – aside the spatial heterogeneities – are more about economic pressures than just inadequate access to electricity, and the poor reliability of the electricity grid.
Recent findings on the toxicity of gas stoves are important – and they make gas cooking less of an appealing alternative. Nevertheless, those harms pale in comparison to the harms of cooking with biomass.
Nigeria’s energy future
Decarbonising Nigeria’s energy system and its built environment go hand in hand.
However, Nigeria’s energy system is not simply a matter of local interest. Nor is Nigeria likely to be able to source domestically all of the materials, productive capacity, and technological know-how for an energy transition. It will need assistance from abroad.
The previous government of Muhammadu Buhari introduced a “National Climate Change Policy for Nigeria 2021-2030” (revised June 2021), which called for climate change mitigation measures “that will promote low carbon as well as sustainable and high economic growth”.
The transition away from fossil fuels will change the entire form of the Nigerian economy. It means remaking the built environment, the energy system, agriculture, and all forms of production and consumption, on a low-carbon basis – while also ensuring climate resiliency for the future.
It means reconfiguring Nigeria’s built stocks, so as to enable a future with only no-emissions operational flows.
Yet Nigeria’s fossil fuel sector is currently expanding, both in terms of production and domestic consumption.
Two arguments made in favour of this are that it facilitates efficient industrial and economic growth, chiefly by providing foreign capital, and that it frees up natural gas as an alternative to dirty biomass fuels in homes.
On the other hand, Nigerian environmental activists and non-governmental organisations argue that most new investment should go to renewably-produced electricity, and development of the electrical grid, in order to directly address the lack of energy access in the country, and turn the tide against fossil fuels.
The writer and campaigner Nnimmo Bassey, along with other environmental activists and civil society organisations, organised a forum to discuss environmental issues in the run-up to the last general election, in February 2023. Bassey says the meeting was, “shunned by the front-running political candidates” – and that, judging from their public statements, “the parties are all enamoured with rent-seeking from the murky oil and gas sector”.
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| Primary energy supply (top), and final energy consumption (above), in 2015. Source: IRENA (2023) |
At COP26 in 2021, the Buhari government committed to “carbon neutrality” by 2060. Nigeria’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) commits to reduce fugitive methane emissions from oil and gas operations 60% by 2031. According to the IEA, Nigeria’s NDC “includes objectives” consistent with limiting global mean temperature increases to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, and with limiting the increase to 1.5°C.
The Climate Tracker website gives Nigeria an overall rating of “almost sufficient”, citing continued “mixed messages on energy priorities”. They think Nigeria’s policies and targets “represent a fair contribution to limiting global warming with its own resources”. But to reduce emissions to a level actually consistent with 1.5ºC, “it needs to decarbonise its economy and will require international support to do so”.
The Paris Agreement and its NDCs are based on territorial emissions, and they focus on greenhouse gas reductions to the exclusion of other environmental indices. In Nigeria, so long as fossil fuel extraction remains, so too will ongoing environmental and social catastrophes – regardless of where those fossil fuels are finally combusted, and regardless of what comes next in the way of a domestic green transition.
Nigeria’s NDC objectives were developed in the Energy Transition Plan (ETP), launched by the Buhari government in November 2022.[3] Parallel to the ETP is a “Nigeria Integrated Energy Plan” (NIEP, January 2022), outlining electrification and clean cooking pathways to 2030.
The ETP website makes a clear case for the 2060 carbon neutrality goal: “Desertification in the north, floods in the centre, pollution and erosion on the coast and the associated socio-economic consequences all allude to the reality and grave impacts of climate change. Consequently, bold action to limit the impacts of climate change must be undertaken urgently.”
The Plan’s main objectives are: lifting 100 million Nigerians out of poverty; economic growth; bringing universal access to “modern energy services”, with universal access to electricity by 2030; managed decline of the oil sector, while retaining natural gas as a “transitionary fuel”; “fair, inclusive and equitable energy transition” across Africa; and streamlining all domestic energy transition initiatives.
Access to electricity is front and centre. The 2030 goal means massively extending, and strengthening, the present electricity infrastructure, and the scale of electricity generation, and doing so very rapidly.
The Plan seeks to replace 75% of traditional firewood stoves by 2030, with 50% of households on natural gas instead. In 2050, it sees 65% of households with electric or biogas cookstoves, rising to 100% by 2060 – across urban and rural locations.
Recent analysis by the Africa Policy Research Institute characterises this as the previous government’s “elaborate climate and energy transition architecture”. But it concludes that it is “hamstrung by internal inconsistencies and competition among line agencies for control over different policy aspects.”
The current president, Bola Tinúbú, appears to remain onboard with the ETP – at least formally – but he chooses to emphasise the continued role for the oil and gas sectors within the ETP.
Alarmingly, Tinúbú’s oil minister, Heineken Lokpobiri, recently declared that the Nigerian government only wanted an energy transition on the basis of an enlarged fossil fuel sector:
Africa, including Nigeria, cannot hastily transition with aid or grants. What we need is a strategic investment in our fossil fuels sector to bolster our economy and ensure energy security.
He said that “Nigeria recognises the need to rely on its fossil fuels to finance this transition.”
The Carbon Tracker website notes: “the energy transition by Nigeria’s executive branch remain ambiguous with a strong focus on continuing oil and gas development after the election of President Bola Tinúbú.”
⚫The arguments about Nigeria’s strategies for energy supply to households pit powerful interests in government and corporations, who emphasise the role of fossil gas, against environmentalists and social movements who point to the urgent need to invest in the electricity network, in order to realise the tremendous potential of solar power and other renewable energy sources.
⚫For much more on those arguments, see Making Homes and Energy Transition in Nigeria, by Tom Ackers (a free, downloadable PDF), and linked posts: Nigeria: meeting the need for housing and Nigeria: towards sustainable homes for all.
References.
[1] Analysis by Bloomberg points to a rapid expansion of solar power capacity in the next few years.
[2] Author’s calculation based on Energy Consumption in the UK data and UN DESA’s population estimate for 2015.
[3] An outline of the Plan on the government’s website, and a prospectus for investors, seems to be all that is publicly available.
The Carbon Tracker website notes: “the energy transition by Nigeria’s executive branch remain ambiguous with a strong focus on continuing oil and gas development after the election of President Bola Tinúbú.”
⚫The arguments about Nigeria’s strategies for energy supply to households pit powerful interests in government and corporations, who emphasise the role of fossil gas, against environmentalists and social movements who point to the urgent need to invest in the electricity network, in order to realise the tremendous potential of solar power and other renewable energy sources.
⚫For much more on those arguments, see Making Homes and Energy Transition in Nigeria, by Tom Ackers (a free, downloadable PDF), and linked posts: Nigeria: meeting the need for housing and Nigeria: towards sustainable homes for all.
References.
[1] Analysis by Bloomberg points to a rapid expansion of solar power capacity in the next few years.
[2] Author’s calculation based on Energy Consumption in the UK data and UN DESA’s population estimate for 2015.
[3] An outline of the Plan on the government’s website, and a prospectus for investors, seems to be all that is publicly available.
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