UNIDO Targets 75 Nigerian Industries for Energy Efficiency

The United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) has declared that it would support 75 industries in Nigeria to improve their abilities on Resource Efficiency and Cleaner Production (RECP) and Industrial Energy Efficiency (IEE).

UNIDO said this would help them to reduce energy consumption, environmental degradation and resource depletion.

This was disclosed by the Country Representative and Regional

Director, UNIDO Regional Office Hub, Mr. Jean Bakole, during the, “GEF-UNIDO Industrial Energy Efficiency and Resource Efficiency and Cleaner Production Capacity Building Workshop for Media Stakeholders,” which was held in Lagos State.

Bakole, who was represented by UNIDO’s Environment Expert, Mr. Oluyomi Banjo, said UNIDO was implementing the Nigeria country programme, which he said had gotten approval to be transformed to a Programme for Country Partnership (PCP). He added that the programme, which has environment and energy as its two distinct programmes, would run from 2018 to 2022.

He said: “We hope to support not less than 75 industries across five sectors of food and beverages, wood and furniture, steel and metals, textile and garment and petrochemicals. We will develop the capacity of the organised private sector and develop not less than 300 Nigerian RECP-IEE experts.

“UNIDO has implemented IEE in over 18 countries around the world and has also implemented RECP in over 60 countries. This programme will create an opportunity to develop the IEE and RECP methodologies, human capacity building which will also see Nigerians being trained to a global standard as energy assessors and RECP experts.

“We are hoping that this will eventually lead to the creation of National Cleaner Production Centres in the country (Nigeria), which will also promote circular economy.”

According to him, “This project was collectively developed and submitted by UNIDO on behalf of Nigeria in 2017 under the Global Environment Facility (GEF) 6 Programming Circle.

“It was approved for full project development in 2017 and subsequently approved for full project implementation in 2020. It may interest you to know that for the first time at UNIDO, we are having an integrated IEE and RECP in one project.

“In South Africa, UNIDO’s project on IEE was recently accorded the best project of the year by the

Southern Africa Energy Efficiency Confederation. We look forward to replication records like this in Nigeria.”

Bakole added that “you may wish to know that the outcome of this project is targeted at industries to develop an expert base for Nigeria, which could be exported to other countries in Africa and beyond.

“This project will address to a good extent the questions on how industries can improve their efficiency,