Climate change and clean energy transition in Nigeria
IWRITE concerning a matter of utmost national importance and urgency: the impact of climate change on Nigeria and the need for immediate and comprehensive action. Climate change is a multifaceted threat that affects the economy, agriculture, water resources, health, and the overall well- being of our nation. However, it also presents immense opportunities for us to reimagine our energy system, enabling us to bring new forms of energy into the homes and businesses of every one of our people, wherever they may be.
This transition provides the opportunity for Nigeria to become a global green superpower, exporting natural gas and clean energy commodities such as lithium, as well as green products like aluminum, steel, glass, and hydrogen that can be locally produced using our abundant renewable solar, wind, and hydropower resources. This shift will immediately improve the quality of life for the majority of our people, help create jobs, and unlock new opportunities to attract investments into our energy and manufacturing industries.
Understanding Climate change
Climate change is an existential problem to the human race because it is leading to a rise in global temperatures that may make many parts of the world uninhabitable. And it is particularly such a wicked problem because of three reasons - cumulative global emissions of greenhouse gasses, long time scales and the need for global collective action.
First, the global climate system does not care if your country is a minor or major polluter. It only cares about the cumulative global emissions of greenhouse gasses such as carbon dioxide ( Co2), methane etc. As such although Nigeria and by extension Africa has been a minor polluter of Co2 ( the most important greenhouse gas), accounting historically for only 0.25 per cent and 2.88 per cent respectively of cumulative global emissions, our people continue to bear disproportionately the brunt of climate change effects such as declining water resources, desertification, flooding due to sea level rise and unpredictable extreme weather events. These climate related adversities have led to mass displacement, crop losses and conflict worsening social and economic outcomes for too many of our people.
Second, addressing climate change is a hard problem because of the long- time scales involved. The Co2 we emit today requires 40,000 ( 40K) years for the earth’s natural system of ocean uptake, ocean sediment reaction and rock chemical weathering to remove and reduce it to pre- industrial atmospheric CO2 concentrations of 280 ppm ( currently at ~ 420 ppm and on track to get up to 970 ppm by 2100 ( 1)).
And while some of its effects such as higher temperatures, loss of water resources, extreme rainstorms and fires are more immediate, some others such as sea level rise take hundreds of years for sufficient chunks of the world’s glaciers and ice shelves to melt to lead to noticeable changes in sea levels. These long- time scales may make it difficult for many to understand why we need to urgently solve this problem especially when most of the adverse events are likely to affect many generations yet unborn.
Lastly, climate change needs global collective action to solve. In an age of nationalism, border closures and protectionism can humans coordinate on a global level in an unselfish manner to solve this problem? Will rich countries who have built their wealth on pollution go beyond just reducing their emissions to also ensuring climate equity for developing countries by financing their uptake of clean energy technologies?
We have seen progress in the recent COP28 with the operationalisation of the loss and damages fund but more needs to be done by rich counties to fulfill their pledge under the 2009 UN Climate Change Conference/ COP 15 ( Copenhagen Accords) to mobilize $ 100 Billion per year to support climate change action in developing countries ( 2).
Scientific evidence proves that climate change is human- made and is not part of the natural cycle. Since 1958, scientists have measured the concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. And have used these measurements to build a graph known as the Keeling curve. This curve provides evidence that the rapid increase in atmospheric CO2 is due to human activities, primarily the burning of fossil fuels. C02 and other greenhouse gasses have a heating effect because they serve as a blanket that traps the heat that the earth receives from the sun. As more CO2 has been emitted, there has been a corresponding increase in the earth’s current surface temperature to 15 Celsius - an increase of about one Celsius since the pre- industrial period i. e. AD 1880.
Most of this increase i. e. ~ 0.75 Celsius has occurred since 1975. Given the Earth’s high climate sensitivity this rise is worrisome. A one- degree global change is significant because it takes a vast amount of heat to warm all of the oceans, the atmosphere, and the land masses by that much. In the past, a one- to twodegree drop was all it took to plunge the Earth into the Little Ice Age ( AD 1303 to 1850). A fivedegree drop was enough to bury a large part of North America under a towering mass of ice 20,000 years ago ( 3).
Other scientific studies of oxygen isotopes trapped in the ice cores of tropical glaciers such as on Mount Kilimanjaro ( which indicate air temperature when the ice was formed) have also proven that the last 50 years is the warmest the earth has been since more than 5000 years ago.
By studying the ratio of CO2 isotopes i. e. carbon- 12 to carbon- 13 in the atmosphere and seeing the high amounts of carbon- 12 which comes from burning fossil fuels, scientists have been able to prove that the rapid warming is due to the increase in CO2 emissions emanating from the burning of fossil fuels ( 4).
It is important to note that while the earth has been cooler over the last 10 million years than it is now, the earth was in fact warmer than it is now about 40 million years ago in what is known as the Eocene period ( 5). The deep ocean temperature then was 12 Celsius vs. one to two Celsius today and surface earth temperature was 28 Celsius vs. 15 Celsius today ( 6). But it took millions of years for the earth to get this warm. We are increasing the earth’s temperature in a much shorter time period - only 200 years. The only historic event comparable to what we are doing today is the Paleocene- Eocene thermal maximum ( PETM) event that occurred 55 million years ago when the earth surface temperatures warmed five to eight Celsius. During this time, palm trees grew in the coldest regions of North America - an indication that the current scientific models being used to forecast climate change impacts may in fact be underestimating what can happen when the earth warms so rapidly.
The current models forecast a smooth increase in temperature, changes in rainfall and sea level. In reality, actual climate changes in the past have tended to be abrupt and may indicate that humid tropical areas that are already so warm may actually be completely uninhabitable at such high temperatures and that many countries in tropical regions such as Nigeria may have to be completely evacuated to more northern latitudes if their peoples are to survive. After the PETM, it took 140 million years for the earth to reverse the changes from this period.
This serves as a warning that it may take hundreds of thousands of years for the earth’s climate to fully recover ( 5). Civilised humanity arose during a cool period that has lasted 10 million years and was expected to continue for another 50 thousand years. We have never seen a climate change as severe as the global warming we are now bringing about.