The United States Special Envoy on Climate Change, John Kerry signed the Climate Energy Demand Initiative (CEDI) with Nigeria’s Minister of Environment, Mohammed Abdullahi.
Kerry during his visit to Nigeria on Tuesday, September 13, told the minister of environment that the US president, Joe Biden has also created the President’s Emergency Programme for Adaptation and Resilience. As a CEDI partner, Nigeria could profit from the $12 billion set aside for the implementation of the programme.
Nigeria has also joined the Agriculture Innovation Mission for Climate (Aim For Climate) Programme as a government partner. Under this programme, the United States and Nigeria will collaborate to catalyze climate-smart agriculture innovation that can increase resilience, productivity, and food security for all.
What this means
- Nigeria will implement robust, reliable, cost-competitive, and credible procurement options that are free of human rights violations to help meet clean energy targets and enable other corporates to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
- Nigeria and the United States will work together to reduce carbon emissions in the country while exploring natural gas for industrialization and electricity supply
- Both countries will work to maximize the use of renewable energies, particularly solar energy and wind.
- The United States will support Nigeria in its decarbonization plans.
- Both countries will invest in smart agriculture technologies to foster food security in the face of growing food inflation.
Energy innovator, Chukwuemeka Eze, told Nairametrics that transparency is key in ensuring that these initiatives benefit Nigerians in the long run. He says collaborations between governments as well as other stakeholders in the energy sector will make it easier for energy policies to become action steps.
“At the end of the day, it is not just about alliances and policies, it is about implementation and accountability to the public. Nigerians are the targeted beneficiaries and we must work to ensure it remains that way,” he says.
Recommended Reading: How renewable energy can solve Nigeria’s energy crisis
Backstory
CEDI was launched by the United States Government in November 2021. The purpose of CEDI is to connect countries with companies seeking to rapidly deploy clean energy to offset electricity demand in their sectors, including health, manufacturing, retail, technology, and transportation.
Aim For Climate is a global partnership that aims to accelerate investment & support for climate-smart agriculture & food systems innovation. As a government partner under Aim for Climate, Nigeria must prove the following;
- Climate-smart agriculture (CSA): Stakeholders will use approaches that sustainably increase agricultural productivity and incomes while building resilience to climate change and reducing carbon emissions.
- Research and development (R&D): Stakeholders must make use of basic research, applied research and experimental development to increase energy transition knowledge among Nigerians.
- Demonstration: There must be proof of a set of technologies that can operate at or near full-scale as predicted from intermediate-scale results.
- Deployment: Activities are undertaken to support the diffusion of climate-smart agriculture and food systems innovations, including clean energy and emissions mitigation technology and practices, voluntary partnerships, capacity building, technical assistance, permitting, development and enforcement of rules and regulations, and development and enforcement of codes and standards.
Hope it would be thoroughly monitored so that the funds won’t be looted?