Effects of power generating plants on climate change is pushing the world to lay more emphasis on renewable energy sources like solar, wind, biogas and tidal energy as solution to the problem of power in the country, General Manager of the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), Engineer M. Ezedenna has said.
Speaking at a memorial lecture held in Kaduna, Ezedenna said Nigeria is blessed with abundant natural recourse but no one is really committed to harnessing them well to meet the people's needs in terms of power generation.
"We have natural gas, large coal deposits, hydro, wind and abundant sun light for solar power in which the Federal Government is aggressively developing power plants, transmission lines and substations as ways of stabilizing power supply to consumers.
The major challenge the power sector is facing is that of demand which is higher than supply because transmission and distribution capacity are inadequate to cope with the existing demand and if these problems are not solved, the country will continue with this trend," he stated.
He lamented that the inability of successive governments from 1980 to implement identified critical power projects gave rise to the present gap between demand and supply, inadequate funding, poor project execution by contractors and government policy on enrollment.
According to him, the power sector reform road map was designed to encourage private sector participation to ensure massive investment in power generation and distribution capacity which is why the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) has been unbundled into 18 successor companies.
He decried that training and retraining of Nigerian Engineers should be of serious concern to the NSE because the collapse of the educational system has adversely affected the qualities of engineers that are being turned out from institutions.
