Nigeria to generate 100,000mw by 2030 - ECN

The Energy Commission of Nigeria (ECN) on Monday, March 19, predicted a growth of up to 100,000 megawatts electricity generation in the country by 2030.

Professor Eli Bala, the director general of the ECN, disclosed this in an interview in Abuja, the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports.

Bala said that the projection would be possible with an annual economic growth rate of 7% and steady implementation of the national energy plan by the Federal Ministry of Power, Works and Housing.

“With the incremental power programme; every time, every year, we must have an increment in power generation.

“We will also increase our capacity to transmit as well as the capacity to distribute.

“So I think we are on course, although it is not easy.

“Very soon, we will get to a level where we will have a 100,000 megawatt or 100 gigawatts by 2030 and the economy growing at the rate of about 7% annually,” he said.

Bala, who said the legal mandate of the commission is to produce strategic plans and coordinate national policies, stressed that “for you to have something, you must plan for it.

“If you look at the strategic plans we have produced, we produced energy master plan and in particular with respect to electricity generation.

“We were the first to articulate the various energy mix including what I have told you; renewable and also the nuclear.

“We made a plan in such a manner that we project by 2030, if the economy is to grow at 7%, we need nothing less than 100 gigawatts of electricity capacity.

“And also, you know our politicians want the economy to grow by double-digits. If the economy is to grow by double-digit, we need nothing less than 300 gigawatts by 2030.

“I think knowing what you want is a very important thing. If you don’t know what you want, you are going nowhere,” he said.

Earlier the minister of power, works and housing, Babatunde Fashola, said that the country now has the capacity to generate not less than 7,000 Megawatts (MW) of electricity.

Fashola, who was responding to questions at a forum in Abuja, also said that transmission chains had also developed the capacity to transmit the same megawatts.