EXTRAORDINARY TIMES DEMAND EXTRAORDINARY INNOVATIONS

EXTRAORDINARY TIMES DEMAND EXTRAORDINARY INNOVATION

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Innovations are good and they help us solve a lot of major problems in life. Invention they say is the child of necessity. I have opined in my last edition that it appears that there are inventions that serve no good to humanity but the truth is innovation is important to an easy life. From transportation to agriculture, we have seen the glorious work innovation is doing in helping humanity. This previous week has been a hard one for people living in Nigeria especially Lagos and a lot of questions have been raised. One of them is can we get an alternative to fuel that will still be cost-effective. Yes, many have always talked about renewable energy and the likes but it seems the cost of setting up renewable energy is cutthroat. I am not talking about renewable energy to serve you and your nuclear family. I know you probably don’t really need much to sustain yourself. I am raising the concern for large scale industries in Africa. Is renewable energy that cheap to sustain the kind of energy they need to sustain their production?

Inventions every time in history always take donkey years before it is available to the masses. From telecommunication to medical tech it is obvious production of any invention and its availability is very costly at the initial stage. However, renewable energy has been around for a long time now and we should already be researching how to sustain the diversion of industrial energy from gasoline and crude oil to bio-energy and other renewable energies. Recently, Elon Musk with his belief in renewable energy and research on same tweeted that the world should do something about world crude oil supply. He said, “Hate to say it but we need to increase oil & gas output immediately. Extraordinary times demand extraordinary measures”. This tweet I opine was influenced by the current Russian/Ukraine conflict. Russia is a large producer of crude oil and removing its supply from the market means a lot for the international crude oil market. As Musk noted these are extraordinary times. I understand environmental activists may want to criticise his opinion of increasing gas output which they may say, because of their love for the environment, is crazy.? We love the environment but renewable energy is crazily expensive and not burning fuel is still not the option to bank on.? Elon Musk maker of Tesla cars should be happy that the world’s situation with regards to crude oil will make people acceptance of his cars plumage. Of course, Tesla shares went up by 0.1% but the percentage of the population of the US that can afford Tesla is still very low. A lot of industries still depends solely on crude oil. As it stands, some US congressional lawmakers have been suggesting that drilling more traditional oil well on US soil is the solution to energy in the US or else the economy will be affected if the situation gets worse in the coming days.

Although in many advanced countries like the United States, the adoption of renewable energy is encouragingly great and crude oil use is dwindling but the transition is still very hard as noted by an environmental economist, Ashley Langer. She opined that while it is cheaper to build renewables when considering a new plant, that metric doesn't necessarily apply to running a fossil fuel plant that already exists. Sometimes, the regulatory structure of utilities actually makes it more profitable to keep a coal or natural gas plant running. Mark-Paul, an environmental economist at New College of Florida noted that the said adoption of renewables in the US did not even happen in a business only circle. It was majorly supported by the US government investing serious sums of money into developing modern technology during the early stages which improved the efficiency of solar modules both in the ability to produce them and how much energy solar is able to produce. This is to say that introducing modern technology that will make green energy less costly is costly without government funding.

This led to my worry which is how effective is a government-backed investment in energy in Africa, especially Nigeria. At the moment, the oil price is increasing in the oil market at an all-time high yet the largest suppliers of crude oil in Africa, Libya and Nigeria, are falling behind in production. This is the time to make money but this is the time our output is declining. Citizens will suffer for it. We claim we solely depend on crude oil for our revenue yet we are producing less when demand and price for same are high in the international market. Many may still want Nigeria to start looking away from burning fossil fuels both on the roads and in the industry but are we ready for such? As stated above government involvement in the adoption of renewable energy is important to make it cheaper and available for all. International Renewable Energy Agency in a report tagged Africa 2030: Roadmap for a Renewable Energy Future recommends 14 actions to accelerate the continent’s renewable energy uptake. These include adopting enabling policies, a regulatory framework to catalyse investment, measures to attract investors and promoting off-grid renewable solutions to increase energy access and reduce poverty. Looking at those key action points and knowing we have effectively failed them in the electricity sector and petroleum industry, I fear we won't fail in this area too.

So while we are busy arguing on whether we want to mine more eNaira (if that is not faux) or clamouring for the government to allow us to mine local cryptocurrency we should be aware of the world gas that mining crypto consumes and get our ass down to work to innovate better way to provide energy for our country. By the way, the University of Cambridge bitcoin electricity consumption index stated that bitcoin miners are expected to consume roughly 130 Terawatt-hours of energy which is roughly 0.6% of global electricity consumption. So while we are busy pouring energy into the acceptability of crypto in Nigeria we should rather channel our energy in solving our power problem. The drivers of the economy in the last few weeks in Nigeria has smelled the heat. No fuel. No electricity. Renewable energy is the next stop but it is not that cheap to adopt in the real sense. I believe you used either electricity or fuel to power your devices the last time you get to charge. Africa has a lot to do in making renewable energy available for all and cheaper for both residential and industrial usage. That is what innovation should do. Unfortunately, we may need our government but those ones are not ready. I hope as you struggle to get fuel to power your car and your office you sit down and look at how we can build an alternative to both electricity and fuel in Nigeria. (No don’t even suggest electric cars to me)

?"An increased push for energy efficiency, renewable energy technology, electric mobility - along with the growing digitalization movement and a universal carbon pricing structure - would speed up the carbon-free future and the rise of a global middle class we desperately need. We can and must all do our part. " Joe Kaeser