African nations, according to vice president Yemi Osinbajo, contribute less than 1% of total world carbon emissions.infomation guide nigeria
On Thursday in Lagos, Osinbajo made this announcement during his keynote speech at the 60th Anniversary Dinner of the Oil Producers Trade Section (OPTS) of the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI).
The LCCI, the umbrella organisation for oil and gas corporations that have gathered together to advance their mutual interests, includes the OPTS as a subgroup.
Speaking on the subject of “Nigeria Transitioning to Green Energy,” Osinbajo claimed that wealthier countries’ activities were to blame for the majority of the continent’s negative effects of climate change.
“ We are major victims of the effects of climate change, but there are a few important issues that we have flagged to our wealthier brother-countries in the global north.jamb result
“The first is that we, in the developing world are faced with two, not one crisis; one is climate change and the other is extreme poverty, the cause and consequence of which is energy poverty.
“Or the fact that lack of access to electricity for millions is a cause of deepening poverty.
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“The second is that African countries are the least emitters of carbon today – less than one per cent of cumulative CO2 emissions and even if we triple electricity consumption in African countries (aside from South Africa) solely through the use of natural gas this would add just 0.6 per cent to global emissions.
“So, a lot of the flooding and adverse weather events that we are experiencing here are from emissions caused by the wealthier countries.’’
Thirdly, the vice president said that it was flawed to stop funding gas projects in order to encourage gas-rich nations like Nigeria to switch to renewable energy sources.
He claims that the measures to restrict the funding of fossil fuel projects do not distinguish between grid-balancing gas power plants and upstream coal and oil exploration.
He claimed that no civilization had ever been known to industrialise purely using renewable energy since solar electricity just lacked the base load capacity needed for it.
“Fourthly, stopping the use of gas means that we cannot use Liquefied Petroleum Gas(LPG) for clean cooking stoves to replace the use of kerosene, firewood and charcoal which are dirtier fuels that are widely used for cooking and other domestic purposes, particularly in the rural areas.
“ The use of firewood means cutting down trees and of course desertification and then the loss of our carbon sinks.
`The fifth is the double standards that wealthier countries have adopted on this issue.
“Today in the wake of the energy crisis, many European nations have made recent announcements to increase or extend their use of coal fired power generation through 2023, and potentially beyond.
“ This is in violation of their climate commitments, and analysis suggests that this will raise power sector emissions of the EU by 4 per cent — a significant amount given the high base denominator of EU emissions.’’
“For an example, many European and other global North countries are setting aggressive targets for use of electric vehicles and the banning of combustion engine vehicles.
“ Soon there may be only a few countries using combustion engines; it is also evident that while the Russia- Ukrainian war has shown the hypocrisy in not allowing public funding for fossil fuel projects, the wealthier nations are still of the view that this is the correct policy and that even if public funding is to be allowed financing should not go beyond 2035.
“So far our response has been the Energy Transition Plan–a comprehensive, data-driven and evidence-based plan, designed to deal with the twin crises of climate change and energy poverty.
“ We anchored the plan on key objectives, including lifting 100 million people out of poverty in a decade, driving economic growth, bringing modern energy services to the full population and managing the expected long-term job loss in the oil sector due to global decarbonisation,’’ he said.
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