ENVIRONMENT FG to partner local manufacturers on Green Bond projects
The Minister State for Environment, Ibrahim Jibril Usman, has expressed the readiness of the federal government to collaborate with local manufacturers in the country in implementing the Green Bond projects.
The minister, who was on a visit to NASENI Solar Energy Ltd in Karshi, Abuja, as part of efforts to identify local sources of raw material, said it was a way of encouraging the local contents utilisation.
“It is something to encourage local contents; it is the issue of saving foreign exchange in the country and creating jobs for the youth. We have seen it practically; it is our absolute responsibility to ensure that we give them all the maximum support to see how of we can partner with them and patronise them,” he said.
Jibril, who said that one of the pipe-borne projects in the Green Bond was renewable energy, added that the project would power nine universities using solar. He said since the panels are produced in the country, they would get it from the factory once the project came on stream.
We are sure of the quality and it can compete favourably with any other panel in the world, he added.
The Executive Vice Chairman of NASENI, Prof Mohammad Sani who took the minister round the factory, said NSEL was established to produce quality solar panels.
Prof Mohammad said what would help in diversification and guarantee economic development was local manufacturing, which “should not be by way of importing the machines, raw materials or the men to operate the machines but to produce locally using local technology.”
“The factory is operating at low capacity and cannot compete favourably with foreign products coming into the country in terms of prices until we are able to process raw materials locally for the production of solar PVs,” he said.
He however said what will make the price to crash was, “we have to use the raw material locally to produce what we want. The price is expensive now because we import the solar set but we have outlined how to manufacture it locally with support from government.”
“If we commence using our silicon to locally produce solar set the price of solar energy will be affordable to everybody,” Mohammad said.