The federal government says it is determined to provide the enabling environment for effective utilisation of the nation’s abundant low-carbon  hydrogen energy resources under its energy diversification initiatives.

The Minister of Innovation, Science and Technology, Kingsley Udeh, said this on Tuesday in Abuja at the opening of a three-day summit on Low-Carbon Hydrogen Economy.

It was aimed at accelerating Nigeria’s transition to clean energy. Low-carbon energies include wind, solar, hydro and nuclear power

The event was organised by the Energy Commission of Nigeria (ECN) and the European Union (EU).

As part of the blueprints towards achieving the objective, Mr Udey said that a national hydrogen policy draft had reached an advanced stage and would become operational as soon as possible.

Mr Udeh, represented by the ministry’s permanent secretary, Mukhtar Muhammad, said that Nigeria’s hydrogen is a critical component of the nation’s clean energy transition plan.

He said, “This government commits to ensuring that the regulatory clarity our agencies require to act is not the obstacle to achieving economic diversification.”

The minister acknowledged technical support from Germany and UNIDO, but cautioned that necessary regulatory work and licensing belonged strictly to Nigerian institutions.

“Our partners have offered Nigeria a door; they have not offered to walk through it on our behalf.

“A decade from now, when other nations are developing fleets of hydrogen-powered vehicles on their roads, will you be able to account for what you did?” he said.

The Director-General of the Energy Commission of Nigeria (ECN), Mustapha Abdullahi, explained that the global hydrogen market was predicted to reach $50 billion in the coming decades.

Mr Abdullahi said that Nigeria should leverage its massive natural gas reserves to produce blue hydrogen and create a new economic opportunity while working toward cleaner alternatives.

“We have over 209 trillion cubic feet below the surface as reserves. What we are trying to do is to create another economy to utilise that gas.

“We want Nigeria to be a hydrogen hub where we cannot just utilise it but export it to other African countries,” he said.

The Programme Manager for Energy at the European Union Delegation, Godfrey Ogbemudia, said that clean hydrogen offers immense opportunities for Nigeria to meet its net-zero and renewable targets.

“We are not only just interested in the knowledge that you are going to get. How does this translate into concrete investment?

“How does this help Nigeria meet its energy target? That is what we will be looking forward to seeing, and we are going to follow this up strictly,” he said.

The Statistician-General of the Federation, Semiu Adeniran, emphasised that low-carbon hydrogen was revolutionary for decarbonising hard-to-abate sectors like manufacturing and transport.

Represented by a senior statistician at the National Bureau of Statistics, Kazeem Fatai, Mr Adeniran warned that successful transition frameworks should be evidence-based and economically viable.

“The development of a successful hydrogen ecosystem demands an entirely new baseline of robust statistics.

“We need high-fidelity data tracking energy input-output ratios, infrastructure factor flows, green jobs, and crucially disaggregated data on industrial processes,” he said.

The Executive Director of the Community Research and Development Centre, Etiosa Uyigue, stated that the EU-funded project actively supports multiple core government agencies.

He listed the Nigerian Electricity Management Services Agency and the Rural Electrification Agency among institutions receiving crucial capacity building and data collection support.

He said, “The overall objective of the project is to support the government efforts to achieve the energy transition goals.”

(NAN)