Nigeria: Presidency Tasks Stakeholders On CDM Fund

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This Day (Lagos)

4 August 2008
Posted to the web 4 August 2008

Udeme Clement-Ogbuanu
Lagos

In line with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) initiative to work with investors in achieving alternative energy production, the Presidential Implementation Committee on Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), has called on stakeholders to champion its cause and put Nigeria in perspective to benefit from the scheme estimated at over $70billion.

Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Committee, Professor Collins Olisa-Emeka Gardner, made this statement, while addressing Directors of Global Biofuels Limited in Lagos, stressing that stakeholders have a major role to play in repositioning Nigeria for CDM scheme.

According to him, the alternative energy project is big business and the sector would be a viable one to boost economic growth and development . He also said that Nigeria has the potentials and enough farmland to grow the feedstock needed for alternative energy production.

Also speaking, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Global Biofuels Limited, Dr. Felix Babatunde Obada, explained that CDM Carbon Credit is a scheme put in place by the United Nations to make developing countries producing environmentally friendly fuel benefit from the money that developed economies pay for polluting the environment.

While disclosing that there are over 44,000 companies registered in Europe looking for Carbon Credit, he said his company is working with CDM experts to qualify all their ethanol projects in order to benefit from this scheme.

"We are not polluters and we are also interested in companies that would participate in the projects from conceptualisation to commissioning and operation of the projects," he stressed.Obada emphasised that Carbon Credit is being traded in the world today ,lamenting that the sad thing is that developing economies like Nigeria and the whole of West African countries that are not polluters, which ought to benefit from the scheme, are not benefiting right now. He said, "Unfortunately there is no African country yet that has earned a dime from CDM funds because it is traded within the European countries. The polluting countries supposed to come to non-polluting economies and buy Carbon Credit from them, but because we do not have the industries running, we cannot gain anything from it. So, once our industries begin to sell Carbon Credit, Nigeria would benefit from the scheme." He further revealed that Global Biofuels, the company handling ethanol project in Nigeria, has entered into partnership agreement with Japanese and Canadian companies experienced in CDM matters as core investors in ethanol project to participate financially and in terms of technology in order to enable Nigeria benefit from CDM fund already traded in European countries.

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