Global Warming:  Osinbajo Criticises Europe’s Return to Coal Power While  Cutting Funding for  Gas Projects

Professor Yemi Osinbajo, vice president of Nigeria, has criticised developed nations, particularly European nations, for forcing their financial institutions to stop funding gas development projects. He called this decision flawed.

The return of European countries to coal-fired power plants through 2023 and beyond was also criticised by Osinbajo as having “double standards” and has a breach of the continent’s climate pledge.

At the 60th anniversary of the Oil Producers Trade Section (OPTS), an organisation under the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the vice president made the claims on Thursday night in Lagos during a keynote speech on “Nigeria’s Transition to Green Energy” (LCCI).

According to him, the majority of nations, including Nigeria, concur that it is necessary to bring global emissions to a zero level by the year 2060.

The nation had brought up a few crucial points to the wealthier brother-countries in the global north, noting that Nigeria and Africa were significant victims of the effects of climate change.

Yemi Osinbajo claimed that the primary problem confronting developing nations was two crises rather than one, citing the two problems as extreme poverty and climate change.

Energy poverty, according to Osinbajo, is both the root cause and a result of the two issues, and the fact that millions of people lack access to electricity contributes to poverty’s progression.

Osinbajo added, “The third is that the defunding of gas projects in order to force gas rich countries like Nigeria to stop using gas and use renewables instead is faulty.

“These proposals to ban the funding of fossil fuel projects make no distinction between upstream oil and coal exploration; and gas power plants for grid balancing.

Also no economy in the world has been known to use renewables, solely, to industrialise.
“Solar power simply does not have the base load capacity yet for industry.

Fourthly, stopping the use of gas means that we cannot use LPG for clean cooking stoves to replace the use of kerosene, firewood and charcoal which are dirtier fuels that are widely used for cooking and other domestic purposes particularly in the rural areas.

Yemi Osinbajo said: “The use of firewood means deforestation, cutting down trees and of course desertification and then the loss of our carbon sinks. You can read more of such stories at Credible News 

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‘”The sixth is that wealthy nations have adopted double standards on this matter. Many European countries have recently announced plans to use more coal-fired power generation through 2023 and possibly beyond, following the energy crisis.

“This is in violation of their climate commitments, and analysis suggests that this will raise power sector emissions of the EU by 4% – a significant amount, given the high base denominator of EU emissions,” says one expert.

The prospect of no investments in fossil fuels, especially gas, must be taken seriously, he said, highlighting the sixth and most important argument that Nigeria must act swiftly and intelligently in its national interest.

Yemi Osinbajo warned that soon, there might only be a few countries using combustion engines because many European and other global North countries were setting aggressive targets for the use of electric vehicles and the banning of combustion engine vehicles.

It is also obvious that the wealthier countries continue to believe that this is the right course of action, despite the fact that the Russian invasion of Ukraine exposed the hypocrisy of banning public funding for fossil fuel projects.

You can read more of such stories at Credible News and The Cheer News