The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has suggested that engineers in Nigeria could play vital roles in repositioning the country’s renewable energy potential.
NNPC’s Group Managing Director, Dr. Maikanti Baru, said this recently in Abuja, where he challenged mechanical engineers in the country with interest in renewable energy technology to raise their games and support the corporation’s current initiative to create a non-fossil fuel driven economy.
Delivering a lecture at the 12th Mechanical Engineers Distinguished Lecture, which was organised by the Nigerian Institution of Mechanical Engineers, a division of the Nigerian Society of Engineers (NSE), Baru, noted the NNPC was favourably disposed to institutional collaboration and academic partnership with universities and research centres in promoting research and innovation aimed at diversifying the country’s energy sector.
He traced the advent of the consciousness for the development of bio-fuel technology in the country, to the establishment of the renewable energy division of the NNPC in August 2005 and the subsequent formulation of a renewable energy master plan.
According to him, through the years, the NNPC had remained consistent in its pursuit of alternative energy sources to complement Nigeria’s massive hydrocarbon resource base.
He also said ongoing efforts to create a diversified energy base could benefit from in-country capabilities and ingenious technological support of experts in the areas of mechanical and electrical engineering.
He listed the fields of competence the industry requires to transition to include, system reliability; control theory and modelling stimulation; mechanics-mounting heavy components; designing for shock and vibration; heavy power equipment, as well as skills in enclosure and packing designs.
Other competences required, he noted were skills in magnetics design common in every single solar; wind, electric vehicle and power distribution box; skills in thermodynamics involving thermal and airflow designs; as well as ability to handle rotating machinery and monitor materials reliability and cost.
He said at this stage, the world needed a clean energy revolution in order to break its inordinate dependence on fossil energy fuels, adding that such a revolution would enhance global energy security; promote enduring economic growth; and tackle environmental challenges, as well as break the long-standing link between economic growth and carbon dioxide emission levels.
“Nigeria on its part is endowed with tremendous prospects of growth in renewable technologies on account of readily available hydroelectric potentials, longer hours of sunshine in the northern part of the country and impressive wind speeds in the coastal and mountainous regions and land mass for the cultivation of energy crops like cassava, sugar cane,” Baru said.
He said the NNPC as Nigeria’s leading energy entity was ready to partner with the country’s engineers to advance the country’s renewable energy market.
Culled from ThisDay
