Abuja, Nigeria – December 1, 2022 RMI launched the Energy Transition Academy (ETA) Global Fellowship Program in Nigeria, with funding support from Shell. The Nigeria fellowship program offering is the first ETA Global Fellowship Program for West Africa and the third cohort of the global program. With this expansion, the ETA Global Fellowship Program now includes 48 energy professionals from 16 countries spanning the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa. The fellowship program is designed to support utilities in advancing renewable energy projects, promoting reliable and resilient energy access, and acting on climate change. This cohort includes 20 participants representing four Nigerian distribution network companies (DisCos), including Abuja Electricity Distribution Co., Ikeja Electric, Eko Electricity Distribution Co., and Ibadan Electricity Distribution Co. Fellows have backgrounds in a range of disciplines such as engineering, project management, finance, and law. In the new group, 35 percent are women, representing a concerted effort by RMI and participating DisCos to diversify participants. “The ETA Global Fellowship Program is designed to build the capacity of local distribution companies by upskilling well-positioned professionals who can serve as clean energy champions to advance the development and scaling of utility-enabled renewable energy projects in Nigeria,” "This capacity growth is critical to meet the goals of Nigeria’s Energy Transition Plan. Inclusion of a balance of young professionals, seasoned energy practitioners, and women representing the sector is critical to advancing the energy transition in Nigeria.”

Universal access to electricity in Nigeria is a national development priority. Today, more than 90 million Nigerians lack access to electricity and millions of those connected to the grid have less than 12 hours of electricity per day. “The Nigeria Energy Transition Plan seeks to add 30 GW of new installed capacity by 2030, with at least 30 percent sourced from renewable energy. As noted in the national plan, Nigeria’s net-zero pathway will result in significant net job creation with up to 340,000 jobs added by 2030 and 840,000 by 2060,” says Suleiman Babamanu, Nigeria Program Director, RMI. “This transition requires investing in the people doing the work to advance distributed renewable energy, and the fellowship program is designed based on the training needs identified by RMI, participating DisCos, and fellows.” 

The Renewable-Energy Revolution Will Need Renewable Storage. Can gravity, pressure, and other elemental forces save us from becoming a battery-powered civilization? The German word Dunkelflaute means “dark doldrums.” It chills the hearts of renewable-energy engineers, who use it to refer to the lulls when solar panels and wind turbines are thwarted by clouds, night, or still air. Power companies need to plan not ju st for individual storms or windless nights but for Dunkelflaute that stretch for days or longer.  The obvious solution is batteries. The most widespread variety is called lithium-ion, or Li-ion, after the chemical process that makes it work. Such batteries power everything from mobile phones to electric vehicles; they are relatively inexpensive to make and getting cheaper. But typical models exhaust their stored energy after only three or four hours of maximum output, and little by little, with each recharge. It is expensive to collect enough batteries to cover longer discharges, and batteries can catch fire. The batteries depend on lithium and cobalt. but some seventy per cent of the world’s cobalt came from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. “Unless we have diversity, we’re going to be in trouble,” Srinivasan said. Moreover, a lot of water and energy are required for mining the metals, which can cause environmental damage, and some cobalt-mining operations involve child labor. We need to expand our capacity; by one estimate, we’ll require at least a hundred times more storage by 2040 if we want to shift largely to renewables and avoid climate catastrophe.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Ideally, we’d pair renewable energy with renewable storage.  We already have one kind of renewable energy storage: more than ninety per cent of the world’s energy-storage capacity is in reservoirs, as part of a remarkable but unsung technology called pumped-storage hydropower. Among other things, “pumped hydro” is used to smooth out spikes in electricity demand. Motors pump water uphill from a river or a reservoir to a higher reservoir; when the water is released downhill, it spins a turbine, generating power again. A pumped-hydro installation is like a giant, permanent battery, charged when water is pumped uphill and depleted as it flows down.  But the construction of new facilities in the United States peaked decades ago- the right geography is hard to find, permits are difficult to obtain, and construction is slow and expensive so the hunt is on for new approaches to energy storage.  Instead of pumping water uphill, Quidnet's system sends it underground through a pipe reaching at least a thousand feet down. Later, the system lets the Earth squeeze the water back up under pressure, using it to drive generators. Quidnet’s technology is like a green riff on fracking but with a different goal: the water is meant to be sandwiched between layers of rock, forming underground reservoirs that can be released on demand. The world needs “a whole suite of storage methods.” and not all methods will find a niche as we are really imagining trying to rebuild the entire grid system.” .......and there are other approaches being explored- read on                           
 https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/25/the-renewable-energy-revolution-will-need-renewable-storage

Renewables will cover almost all of global electricity demand growth out to 2025, becoming the world’s top source of electricity within three years, new figures reveal. Carbon Brief analysis of figures in the International Energy Agency (IEA) electricity market report 2023 shows that renewables, combined with resurgent nuclear power, will more than cover growth in electricity demand between 2022 and 2025. This means clean-energy sources will start displacing fossil fuels. As a result, global power-sector carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions will plateau or decline, despite rapidly rising demand. Below, Carbon Brief runs through the report’s key findings via five charts.  1. Electricity demand......The IEA notes that global GDP growth projections have been revised down for almost every country due to the energy crisis, with the UK taking a particularly big hit. Nevertheless, it says that global electricity demand growth will rebound strongly in 2023. It says another 2,500 terawatt hours (TWh) of demand will be added by 2025, predominantly in Asia. This 9% growth would take overall demand to 29,281TWh. It is equivalent to adding an EU-sized chunk of demand to the global electricity system – in only three years. The IEA says growth will be concentrated in Asia, as shown in the chart below. By 2025, China will account for a third of global electricity demand, up from 5% in 1990 and 25% in 2015. Combined with strong growth in other parts of Asia, by 2025 the region will make up more than half of global electricity demand, the IEA says, “for the first time in history”. Although electricity use will grow steadily in Europe and North America, their share of global demand will decline as Asia’s expands. 2. Renewable growth...... The IEA goes on to say that renewables and nuclear will “dominate” electricity demand growth: “Renewables and nuclear energy will dominate the growth of global electricity supply over the next three years, together meeting on average more than 90% of the additional demand.”........and 3 more- read on......   https://www.carbonbrief.org/renewables-will-be-worlds-top-electricity-source-within-three-years-iea-data-reveals/?utm_source=cbnewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=2023-02-11&utm_campaign=This+week+Renewables+leading+power+source+by+2025+Slashing+fertiliser+use+Tropical+carbon+loss

 The global energy crisis is driving a sharp acceleration in installations of renewable power, with total capacity growth worldwide set to almost double in the next five years, overtaking coal as the largest source of electricity generation along the way and helping keep alive the possibility of limiting global warming to 1.5 °C, the IEA says in a new report. Energy security concerns caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have motivated countries to increasingly turn to renewables such as solar and wind to reduce reliance on imported fossil fuels, whose prices have spiked dramatically. Global renewable power capacity is now expected to grow by 2 400 gigawatts (GW) over the 2022-2027 period, an amount equal to the entire power capacity of China today, according to Renewables 2022, the latest edition of the IEA’s annual report on the sector. This massive expected increase is 30% higher than the amount of growth that was forecast just a year ago, highlighting how quickly governments have thrown additional policy weight behind renewables. The report finds that renewables are set to account for over 90% of global electricity expansion over the next five years, overtaking coal to become the largest source of global electricity by early 2025. “Renewables were already expanding quickly, but the global energy crisis has kicked them into an extraordinary new phase of even faster growth as countries seek to capitalise on their energy security benefits. The world is set to add as much renewable power in the next 5 years as it did in the previous 20 years,” said IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol. “This is a clear example of how the current energy crisis can be a historic turning point towards a cleaner and more secure energy system. Renewables’ continued acceleration is critical to help keep the door open to limiting global warming to 1.5 °C.”   https://www.iea.org/news/renewable-power-s-growth-is-being-turbocharged-as-countries-seek-to-strengthen-energy-security            Read the report  The current global energy crisis brings both new opportunities and new challenges for renewable energy. Renewables 2022 provides analysis on the new policies introduced in response to the energy crisis.....Explore report