Investments and collaborations key to an equitable energy transition
The ways that energy leaders balance decarbonisation with energy security, affordability and industrialisation was dissected in the Ministerial Panel Global shifts: navigating an era of diverging priorities.
Rt. Honourable Ekperikpe Ekpo, Minister for State of Petroleum (Gas) Resources in Nigeria began by explaining the challenges facing his country. He emphasised the need for a just and fair equitable energy transition across Africa.
“Around 80 million people in Nigeria and 600 million people across Africa are living without access to electricity,” he stated.
“So many millions are still depending on biomass for cooking too, which is not clean. We need to change the narrative in a way that does not undermine economic stability.” He went on to explain that while the development of solar power in Nigeria was encouraging, gas is still at the centre of everything.
“It is not possible to address poverty through decarbonisation. We are advancing towards using renewable energy, however we also need to take advantage of the abundance of natural gas that we have in our country, measuring around 210 trillion cubic feet. This will allow us to develop the economy and further industrialisation. Unfortunately, it is currently not possible for us to create the power we need through renewable energy.”
“On Friday, I will actually sign a government agreement-to-government agreement with our friends from the UAE that will encourage investments in Montenegro’s renewable energy sector from UAE national companies.”
- His Excellency Admir Šahmanović, Minister of Energy and Mining for Montenegro
It was noted that Zimbabwe is also suffering from a shortage of energy. To rectify this and improve affordability, The Honourable July Moyo, Minister of Energy and Power Development for Zimbabwe explained that the country had opened its energy generation and distribution to the private sector.
“Zimbabwe is now interconnected to 12 countries through the Southern African Power Pool. Luckily for us, we also recently discovered oil and gas in our country, too. With investment from the Gulf region, we are now going to start extracting gas and we hope to strengthen our marketability in terms of fossil fuel energy.”
On the topic of developing renewable energies, His Excellency Admir Šahmanović, Minister of Energy and Mining for Montenegro stated that Montenegro operates on 60% renewable energy. By the end of the year, it hopes to be in line with EU standards.
“We have around 65 projects in the pipeline, mainly in the sectors of solar panels and wind parks,” he said.
“We have undersea cables connecting us with Italy that have a capacity of 600 megawatts. We want to position ourselves as a regional energy bridge between Western Balkan and the European Union.”
His Excellency Jassim Alshirawi, Secretary General of the International Energy Forum (IEF) explained that the IEF strives to encourage decarbonisation by providing a neutral and inclusive platform for dialogue between producers and consumers of energy.
“Our main focuses are energy security, market and data transparency and sustainability,’ he said.
“Inclusivity is also important for us, we include companies every corner of the energy sectors, including petroleum, nuclear and all forms of energy. By getting members together who have different views, we encpurage them to collaborate, act and create amicable and practical solutions for the energy industry.”
Moving to the role of gas in tackling climate change, His Excellency Osama Mobarez, Secretary General of the East Mediterranean Gas Forum (EMGF) mentioned that his organisation launched its own decarbonisation initiative back in 2022.
“Our main goal is to make gas cleaner and reduce emissions,” he explained. "We regulate the industry and look for ways of producing gas more responsibly. On top of this, we work to accelerate the development of gas resources and the discovery of more supplies.”
The panel ended with discussing the different ways of attracting investment in renewable energies. His Excellency Admir Šahmanović said that Montenegro is striving to establish financial and political partners.
“In the next month, we are expecting to attract around half a billion euros in investments. On Friday, I will actually sign a government-to-government agreement with our friends from the UAE that will attract investments to Montenegro’s renewable energy sector from UAE national companies.”
