FG not disturbed by clamour for renewable energy - minister
… says carbon emission is the issue
Federal Government says it is not disturbed by the clamour that renewable energy will replace fossil fuel in nearest future, as it doubt the sincerity of those advocating that it would completely take over the place of crude oil in the global energy mix. Timipre Sylva, minister of state for petroleum resources who stated this at the ongoing Nigeria International Petroleum Summit (NIPS), said for us as a country, what we advocate is that the country should transit through gas to renewable. The position of Nigeria is that gas emits less carbon, it is a cleaner fuel and the country has it in abundance, Sylva said, saying, “So, this is why we said gas will become our transitional fuel.”
According to Sylva, the world would not completely abandon fossil fuels for renewable because those at the core of driving global demand for crude oil are industries that actually take the crude oil as their main raw material. Such industries include petrochemical, fertilizers companies or gas-based industries like LNG and the refineries, and not electric cars. These, he said, are the drivers of growth for demand for crude oil.
So, Nigeria is not worried about driverless cars or electrical cars, as their development would not reduce the global demand for crude oil, he said.
Carbon emission is the real issue the world is having, and not about renewable, he noted, stating further that there is a technology for carbon capture which if fully developed can be used to easily reduce carbon emission from fossil fuel to zero level.
He lamented that the European countries had budgeted about a trillion dollar for renewable energy instead of deploying the money on carbon capture technology that would help reduce carbon emission globally. They know that Asia and Africa, where there is so much carbon emission, are not ready for renewable energy race for now. The bulk of the European budget is to be spent where the lowest carbon emission is being produced in the world. “So, we begin to fear whether this is not an attempt by Europe to subsidised the development of renewables so that in the long term they would have made renewables so cheap that they would become net exporters of energy to the rest of the world. Renewable is not a race to renewable, but race against carbon emission.