Nigeria’s clean energy: Thousands of homes connected to electricity for first time

As Nigeria supports clean electricity for rural communities to replace climate-damaging diesel generators, solar mini-grid firms like Husk Power Systems are bringing renewable energy and jobs.

Rice farmer Danjuma Okuwa knows what he needs to do to boost his profits: use a machine to remove the husk from his grain and then sell it direct to buyers at the local market, instead of supplying his unmilled harvest to a global agribusiness nearby.

A 50-kilowatt solar mini-grid system, installed in his rural community of Rukubi in Nigeria’s central Nasarawa state a year ago, now makes that possible at an affordable cost.

Most rice in the town – a two-hour drive from the state capital Lafia on a potholed dirt road – is processed with machines run on generators that fill the air with smoke, ear-splitting noise and climate change-fuelling pollution.

Today, diesel and petrol generators – which plug a gap caused by limited connections to the national electricity grid and frequent power outages – belch out about a third of emissions from the country’s power sector, according to the Nigeria Energy Transition Plan.

‘It’s good business’

But when Okuwa flicks a switch on his gleaming solar-powered electric de-husker, housed in a shed at his family compound, it hums quietly into action, separating the beige skin from the whitish rice, which can now fetch him a higher price, but with less expense to the environment or human health.

“It’s a good business,” said the ambitious young farmer, who cultivates five hectares of paddy rice with his brother and employs village youth.

“The problem is financial and [other] support; we do face challenges,” Okuwa said, pointing to the difficulty of finding capital to invest in expansion and a lack of local skills. He is paying for his new milling machine in instalments under an appliance financing scheme run by the solar firm.

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This year, Okuwa’s farm has also faced destructive flooding after unusually heavy rain in the region, which the government has blamed on climate change.

Rukubi’s mini-grid was the first of 12 set up so far in Nasarawa state by Husk Power Systems, a clean energy company that started in India, connecting thousands of Nigerian homes and businesses to electricity for the first time.

90 million Nigerians without power

Husk plans to build at least 500 solar mini-grids across Nigeria by 2026, serving more than two million people and putting 25 000 diesel generators out of action. Tackling pollution from generators is a key pillar of the West African nation’s Energy Transition Plan (ETP), which maps out measures to cut its planet-heating greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2060.

Despite its abundant fossil fuel reserves, more than 40% of Nigerians – about 90 million people – still have no access to electric power, one of the key reasons as many as four in 10 live below the national poverty line.

The ETP, launched in August, aims to ensure electricity provision to all Nigerians by 2030, in line with a globally agreed goal on energy access, while lifting 100 million people out of poverty and driving economic growth.

Nigeria – one of Africa’s top oil and gas producing nations – has also committed to phase down its reliance on fossil fuels. But gas will play “a critical role as a transition fuel” and its use will be ramped up for power generation and cleaner cooking until 2030, the plan says.

Nigeria’s ETP targets a complete phase-out of diesel and petrol generators – widely used by households, business and industry – by 2050. Both on- and offgrid solar power, supplemented with hydrogen, are seen as key replacements.

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Husk Power says when it installs solar mini-grids in a community, about half of generators are taken offline within the first year, cutting customers’ monthly energy costs by at least 30%.

With fossil fuel prices soaring around the globe, pain from high diesel prices is helping solar companies like Husk make the business case for using cheaper, renewable power.

– Thomson Reuters Foundation