Stakeholders seek intervention for affordable clean cooking energy
STAKEHOLDERS in the nation’s household energy sector have agreed to work together to strengthen engagement between scientific, policy and societal actors on clean cooking. Rising from a high- level policy dialogue themed ‘ Deploying State- of- the art Evidence for Household Energy Policy Making in Nigeria,’ they agreed that achieving the Federal Government’s goals of universal access to affordable, accessible and clean household energy depend on the interaction between science and policy.
The dialogue organised by the International Centre for Energy, Environment and Development ( ICEED), in collaboration with researchers from the University of Nottingham, United Kingdom and the University of Ibadan, was to deepen exchanges between science and policy actors.
In his welcome remarks, the Executive Director, ICEED, Ewah Eleri, expressed concern over the current rise in the price of cooking gas. According to him, “prices of LPG have quadrupled in the past two years, sending more households down the energy ladder as they fall back to wood and charcoal as sources of cooking energy.
To address this, he said the government must show commitment to enforce a domestic obligation on upstream gas companies to give priority to the domestic Liquefied Petroleum Gas ( LPG) market before exporting made- in- Nigeria cooking gas to the international market. “It runs against the Federal Government’s Energy Transition Plan pricing made- in- Nigeria cooking gas in dollars. The dollarisation of cooking gas produced in Nigeria only makes this life- saving product unaffordable to households,” he cautioned.
In his contribution, Deputy Chairman, House of Representatives Committee on Power, Hon Joshua Gana, emphasised the role of the National Assembly in ensuring that policies receive the required legislative support. He called for partnership with stakeholders in achieving this goal, assuring that the committee’s preparedness to work with both the scientific community and the executive in developing an effective legislative framework for achieving universal access to clean cooking.
Earlier, Dr Mike Clifford of the University of Nottingham emphasised the need to strengthen clean cooking research and
ensure the availability of credible evidence base for policy making in the sector.
According to him, “it is important to identify technical, financial and institutional drivers for reinforcing the linkages between science and policy, and impacts on society. There is a lot that can be achieved with collaborative research and the creation of platforms to bridge the existing gap between
research and policy,” he said.
In her presentation, a researcher and lecturer at the University of Ibadan, Dr Deborah Ayodele- Olajire, who spoke on the evolution of clean cooking research, from a focus on health to issues of the environment and the empowerment of women, presented the evidence, key milestones and debates in both research and policy.