How energy efficiency mitigates greenhouse emissions

28 July 2009, ThisDay
URL: http://www.thisdayonline.com/nview.php?id=149924

Lagos:  The country office of the United Nations Development Programme recently hosted its regional energy technical adviser, Mr. Benoit Lebot in Nigeria. The occasion provided a forum for the formulation process for the Global Environment Facility energy efficiency project in the country. Interested stakeholder were part of the discussions on how best to mitigate the impact of global warming on Nigeria: 

Human activities that bring about global warming with its negative impact on the environment come in divergent ways. The conventional round-shaped lighting bulb otherwise referred to as incandescent light, costs much less than a fluorescent tube or other variants of energy efficiency bulbs. However, in terms of impact on the environment and volume of energy consumption, the effects of fluorescent tubes or energy efficiency bulbs are insignificant compared to the havoc incandescent lighting bulbs could cause.

This concern which came to light at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Global Environment Facility (GEF) project in Abuja last week was that although the challenges of energy generation have become very dire in the country, the popular use of incandescent bulbs and other electrical appliances is worsening the energy brouhaha. Not only that, the contribution of these variants of electrical appliances to global warming and climate change is enormous. The world has evolved ways to deal with the greenhouse emissions as a result of energy consumption for both residential and industrial purposes.

Lead speaker at the forum, Mr. Benoit Lebot, UNDP climate change / energy technical Adviser for the West African sub-region, said the developed world has since adopted energy efficiency as a way of dealing with the effects of global warming. Speaking at the programme formulation process for the GEF Energy Efficiency project in Nigeria, Lebot declared that energy efficiency appliances are far better than their obsolete counterparts because there are low in the generation of carbon dioxide and also bring electricity bills to the lowest minimum because of its low consumption of energy.

Speaking specifically about France, the GEF technical adviser stated that in that part of the world, electrical appliances and even cars that do not have energy efficiency technology attract higher tariffs than those that have the technology. The policy, he stated, was devised to encourage more people to use energy efficiency appliances so as to reduce greenhouse emissions and make the environment safer for inhabitants.

Lebot stated that climate change is essentially about living habits that have effects on the environment. He described energy efficiency as the first option in mitigating the effects of greenhouse gases. He said the difference between developed and developing countries is in the use of energy, which the later has been using for several years for its development. He said in Europe, appliances are labelled from A-G to indicate their level of energy efficiency. He said the market over there was easily transformed because more people began to go for more efficient appliances. He stated that 54 countries with the 80 per cent of the world's population have introduced labelling as an incentive to reduce electricity consumption.
According to Lebot, firm steps to transform the market in the country include the following, understanding, information and labelling, research and development, minimum energy performance and market pull.

Also speaking, Mr. Etiosa Uyigue, executive director, Community Research and Development Centre, Benin, a consultant to the GEF project, said it is aimed at promoting energy efficiency in residential and public sector in Nigeria. Uyigue stated that agencies of government can enforce a ban on the use of some of these incandescent appliances. The UNDP GEF project, he stated, is worth about $3 million dollars to be complemented with counterpart funding from the Nigerian government. He said the demonstration of energy efficiency bulbs and appliances would be undertaken in the six geo-political zones of the country.

The background to the UNDP GEF project in Nigeria is the dire power production shortfalls and the poor quality of electricity supply, which force the majority of businesses and households to rely on diesel generators as their main source of power. The current electricity generated by the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) is currently below 3,000 megawatts. Past promises of increase from this epileptic level have never been met. While PHCN expects to augment its productive capacity by 1,500 MW per year, this increase is expected to barely keep up with the growth in demand from households and businesses.

Within this context, experts say the promotion of large scale; concrete, national energy efficiency programme is a critical demand-side initiative to help reduce the energy consumption of a series of major end-users, in particular, air-conditioners, refrigerators and lighting. It is premised that with Nigeria accounting for 25 per cent of the population of sub-Saharan Africa, the proposed energy efficiency legislative package will have a significant impact on addressing the inevitable growth of electricity consumption in the region while contributing to greenhouse gas reduction.

Government representatives at the forum from Ministry of the Environment, Energy Commission of Nigeria, Nigeria Energy Regulation Commission (NERC), Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) and the rest all share in the vision of energy efficiency. They say government was aware of the problem and it was the underlying principle that informed the banning of used appliances into the country.

As Nigerian demand for appliances and end-use equipment continues to grow under the combined cumulative effect of urban population growth and economic activity, the government believes that the proposed energy efficiency policy framework is particularly timely to the extent that it will set in motion a local process of collaboration among importers and local manufacturers of end-use equipment by creating the appropriate market incentives to improve the energy efficiency of the selected appliances.

An official of the Ministry of the Environment, Mrs. Mohammed said government was prepared to embrace the energy efficiency initiative because of its multiple benefits to the people and the environment generally. Mohammed, who spoke on behalf of her boss in the ministry said the government was prepared co-fund the GEF project in Nigeria to tap these benefits in the face of the threats from global warming. Her counterpart from the Energy Commission of Nigeria also gave an assurance of their preparedness to be part of the activities that would make the populace embrace the initiative of energy efficiency.

He said already, his commission has started a pilot project to experiment the initiative in an estate in Abuja. He said any project that would mitigate the impact of climate change on the country was welcome to his agency. “The National Energy Commission of Nigeria is particularly keen to encourage energy efficient end-use and willing to promote the most relevant policy framework. It is worthwhile and the people, if well informed about the benefits will have no difficulty in embracing it”, he stated.

As a consensus of the participants at the forum stated, although it might be cheaper to buy the incandescent bulbs and other electrical appliances, but on the long run, the benefits of buying the more expensive energy efficiency appliances clearly outweigh the former. After the national and international consultants took turns to enlighten the forum, no one was left in doubt on the way to go.  They attributed barriers to energy efficiency in the country previously to poor pricing of electricity, poor billing system, lack of awareness, epileptic power supply, substandard products, lack of regulatory control and importation of second-hand equipment. Others are lack of synergy between agencies of government, NGOs, industries and other stakeholders and absence of personnel to monitor appliances after close of work.

They concluded that the problems could be addressed through appropriate pricing of electricity, increase in tariffs for incandescent appliances, awareness creation on the use of energy efficiency appliances and renewable energy alternative and also implementation of the use of pre-paid metres nationwide.  The GEF project document was presented and appraised by the participants, who all pledged their support to the realisation of the goals contained in the document. The Country Office of UNDP, which facilitated the meeting, promised to carry through the implementation of the pilot project.