He said that the gasification technology, which converts municipal and agricultural organic wastes to energy, presents a viable option to give Nigerians clean and affordable energy.
A professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Emenike Ejiogu, has called on the Nigerian government to liberalise the generation and distribution of electricity through gasification technology.
Ejiogu, who is the Dean of the Faculty of Engineering of UNN and Director of the Africa Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Power and Energy Development (ACE-SPED), said that adopting the proposal would end the frequent collapse of the national grid.
The professor advocated for gasification technology while delivering the 190th Inaugural Lecture of the University of Nigeria titled, ‘My Engineering Odyssey: Energy Security, Energy Sustainability and Bringing Power to the People’.
He said that the gasification technology, which converts municipal and agricultural organic wastes to energy, presents a viable option to give Nigerians clean and affordable energy.
Ejiogu said that the gasification technology has the potential to inject over 6000MW of electricity into the Nigerian economy within a short period of time.
According to him, a study carried out by his team to assess the waste-to-energy generation potential of Uyo, Akwa Ibom State and its environs showed that the city had enough waste to generate about 20MW of electric power.
He argued that a replication of similar potential in 300 localities in Nigeria would ensure a rapid injection of 6000MW of electricity into the economy.
“With 6000MW of electric energy available by distributed generation all over Nigeria, we would really have given power to the people," he said.
The don argued that the waste-to-energy generation system presents a triple advantage to Nigeria as it could provide electricity, clean up the environment, and create many waste management value chain jobs.
He said the time was ripe for Nigeria to utilise available technologies to harness its energy potential and decentralise power generation to the people instead of holding on to the epileptic national grid system which throws the country into darkness whenever it collapses.
Ejiogu explained that his team had been experimenting with the gasification technology to provide electricity at his residence, the Faculty of Engineering and the administrative office of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.
“I can tell you that it is one of the low-hanging technologies; it is four times cheaper than solar energy," he said.
The professor said that his research group had also designed a bioreactor that could transform waste vegetable oil into clean biodiesel at a competitive cost of N500 per litre.