FG needs to harness Nigeria’s coal potentials for power – Expert

The federal government has been urged to explore the great potentials of coal as a way of escaping erratic power supply in the country.

A former Permanent Secretary with the Federal Ministry of Power, Chief Robert Audu, who disclosed this during an interview, said coal is the easiest and cheapest way to generate enough electricity for the country.

He bemoaned Nigeria situation that is oscillating around 5,000MW, while South Africa today has attained 88000 MW.

According to him, Nigeria’s dream of joining the world’s most developed economics by 2020 cannot be realised with the present level of power generation that is still hovering between 4,000 to 5,000 MW. “With the current energy mix being dominated by hydro and thermal, it is clear that the prospect of doubling output from these sources is quite remote while gas which is an expensive source of power has not been flowing to power stations without interruption by economic saboteurs.”

He suggested that the Federal Government need to set targets and time frame for achieving our goal for power rating of 50,000 mw by 2020 and disclosed that coal power is cheapest.
According to him, 1.68% Federation Account Allocation for solid minerals development be dedicated to coal-to-power scheme for the next six years (including funds already accumulated as seed money) to facilitate attainment of 33,000 mw coal-fired power contribution and an aggregate rating of 50,000 mw by 2020.

He said major industrialized nations have energy mix dominated by coal with (USA) (50%) china (80%) South Africa (80%) etc. Japan, he said has shut down all of its nuclear power plants and adopted coal because of threat of earthquake, arguing that the world has discovered clean method of generating power utilizing coal.

Chief Audu said for the country to achieve stable electricity generation, it must put in place the enabling environment that would attract leading contractors in the coal-to-power sector from countries that have harnessed such potentials.