Energy Access and Renewable Energy Technology EA-RET

Despite Nigeria’s abundance of fossil and renewable energy resources, Nigerians still experience acute energy supply-demand gap. However, dependable and affordable energy is crucial to economic growth in both developed and developing countries – to power homes, connect communities, provide safe water, and promote economic and human development. There is an urgent need for Nigeria, sub-Saharan Africa in general, to meet the universality of energy supply by the year 2030.

The majority of the signposts of all the policies have been directed towards climate change mitigation and off-grid renewable energy sources, which is amplified in the Nigerian Rural Electrification Policy, overseen by the Rural Electrification Agency, and the Nigerian Nationally Determined Contribution towards climate change mitigation. The off-grid energy access sector, while still nascent, is on the cusp of transformational growth by 2020 and beyond, with policymakers, regulators, investors, and development institutions now placing greater emphasis on the role they play in delivering higher tiers of energy access.

Central to this is the need to train the next generation of energy professionals to have broader wisdom as they navigate complex technical challenges and policy makers are forced to makes decisions under high levels of uncertainty of all kinds (technical, financing, gender, business, management, environmental etc).