May 19, (THEWILL) – The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva said an annual global investment of $25 billion could help 2.6 billion Africans gain access to clean cooking by 2030.
The minister said an annual investment of around $35 billion could bring electricity access to 759 million Africans, who currently lacked it, adding that the required investment represented only a small fraction of the multi-trillion-dollar global energy investment needed overall.
A statement on Thursday by his Senior Adviser, Media and Communications, Horatius Egua, said Sylva spoke at the annual Symposium and Exhibition of the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) in Lagos.
Speaking on the theme of the SPE annual symposium and exhibition: “Energy Transition In Africa: A Strategic Pathway To Net Zero”, Sylva said, the United Nation Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), in a report, noted that Africa needed about $40 billion worth of investments every year, to meet its energy needs.
Making reference to UN’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Sylva said globally, everybody can have access to clean, affordable energy within the next nine to 10 years if countries modestly increased investments.
“The major question that is yet to be answered is whether Africa would benefit from an equitable share in the global investment and growth.
“Or will it continue to fall behind global standards as encapsulated in the UN’s 17-Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
“Despite the long-term and required drop in demand for fossil fuels, short-term demand and prices remain robust, providing strong commercial justification for their extraction and a need to smooth transition”, Sylva noted.
He said despite contributing less than six percent of world energy consumption and two percent of total global emissions, there was need for the continent to shift to cleaner energy use.
According to Sylva, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has projected that renewable energy was expected to support the growth of electricity from 20 to 50 percent of total energy supply by 2050, while the remaining energy demand impossible to electrify, would require cleaner solutions, which could only come from natural gas – the closest ally to renewables.
Sylva, however, said in that context, a key decision and renewed impact was to persist in expanding the role and opportunities of natural gas towards recovery and shared prosperity for a sustainable Africa.
He said with significantly untapped fossil fuel reserves, which could provide much-needed foreign direct investment and export revenue, Africa had the ability to play a leading role in the transition to a net-zero energy future.
According to him, the continent’s enormous resources can be harnessed, using clean energy technologies.
“And in line with Federal Government declaration of years 2021–2030 as the ‘Decade of Gas’, we are taking steps to expand and develop the nation’s huge gas resources”, he said.
This, according to Sylva, would be through enhanced gas exploration, development and utilisation schemes, which would lead to gas reserves growth, increased gas production, maturation of the domestic and export gas market, as well as gas flare elimination.
He called for a multiple pathway to the energy transition, to ensure that no country was left behind in the process of achieving net-zero emission by 2060.
“We need to develop bankable projects to scale up access to funding and investment and adopt a mix of energy solutions to address the needs of each country”, he said.
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