Nigeria is a large and significant country in Africa, with some 20% of Africa's population and an economy to match, and a significant oil and gas sector. It recently issued its updated NDC for COP26 where it pledges to reduce emissions by 20% by 2030 and by 47% by 2030 conditional on international support, which would then be consistent with a 1.5C pathway.
The government of Nigeria has identified CCUS as a key technology to support Nigeria's energy transition and climate targets. CCUS can underpin a long-term role for natural gas in meeting Nigeria's economic development and energy security goals. CCUS can also support the decarbonisation of Nigeria's industrial sector along with opening new domestic markets and export opportunities for Nigeria's gas resources, including through low-carbon hydrogen production.
Recognising the strategic value of CCUS in Nigeria, the IEA is working with the Office of the Vice President of Nigeria (OVP) to build CCUS capacity and identify near-term needs and opportunities for CCUS development and deployment consistent with the country's energy transition. The IEA and the OVP organised a virtual workshop on CCUS on the 10 September, aimed at information exchange and capacity building with the Nigerian government and other local stakeholders. This attracted some 145 attendees, mostly from Nigeria.
What was most exciting was the announcement of a CCUS strategy from the Nigerian government. This was presented by Victor Osu of the OVP. This strategy will include technical assessments of the sources and sinks, identify further the potential for 4 CCUS hubs, develop plans for a pilot or demonstration project, develop a regulatory framework, engage stakeholders, undertake capacity building, and assess policy measures to stimulate CCUS.
Further perspectives from Nigeria were provided by Dr Felicia Mogo, formerly a Director in NIMASA, and introduced as the "first initiator of CCS in Nigeria".
IEAGHG was invited to present on the current global status of CCUS technologies. We were very pleased to do this, especially because of our previous engagement with Nigeria. This included in the London Protocol, in the Offshore CCS workshops, with CTCN, and including them in our Africa-themed CCS Side-event at COP22 in Marrakech (2016). Some of this work was submitted by Dr Mogo as a formal paper by Nigeria to the London Protocol in 2016, and in a co-authored paper with IEAGHG and the University of Texas at GHGT-14.
Further presentations were provided by Sam McCulloch of the IEA, Brendan Beck for the World Bank, and Iain McDonald from OGCI. Of particular note was that the World Bank hosted a meeting of multilateral development banks in 2019 which concluded in its report that "CCUS is an eligible activity for climate mitigation finance".
This was a most encouraging workshop with this major economy in Africa, and we look forward to working alongside IEA with Nigeria on CCUS in their journey to net-zero. Information from the workshop is available at the IEA website.