Kingdom Divided: Fragmentation in the Nigerian Renewable Energy Policy Space

Written by Abel B.S. Gaiya

Curated by Clean Technology Hub (October, 2024)

Like any sustainability transition, an energy transition is an ambitious undertaking demanding high levels of governance capabilities and cross-institutional coherence. In countries where power and interests are dispersed, energy transition policies would tend to be more fragmented. This is, unfortunately, the case for Nigeria which is the most populous African country, the most energy-poor on the continent, and a country with a high level of dependence on oil rents.

Nigeria’s renewable energy policymaking and implementation landscape is dominated by five main actors: the Federal Ministry of Power, the Energy Commission of Nigeria (ECN), the Rural Electrification Agency (REA), the Energy Transition Office (ETO), and the National Council on Climate Change (NCCC). Compared to the level of ambition outlined in Nigeria’s Energy Transition Plan and Nationally Determined Contributions, the Nigerian renewable energy sector policy space is not optimally rationalized.

Building on evidence from the 2024 National Budget, Google Trends search data, national policy documents, institutional social media data, news reports and press releases, it is demonstrated that the Federal Government of Nigeria has a long way to go in building the state capacity, cohesion and interest in rapidly driving a nationwide energy transition.

Fragmentation in the Policy Space

The overarching institution mandated with overseeing the power sector in Nigeria is the Federal Ministry of Power (FMP). The Ministry, however, has its hands full with revitalizing a national grid which has been underperforming for decades, across generation, transmission and distribution segments of the value chain. This struggle has been on since the ambitious enactment of the Electric Power Sector Reform Act in 2005. While natural gas accounts for about 85% of the electricity mix generated on the grid, the main ways that the Ministry of Power proactively contributes to the energy transition is incidentally through its efforts to revitalize large hydropower electricity generation. While some success on these large hydropower projects has been secured, the FMP continues to struggle to bring to life 14 utility scale solar independent power projects (IPPs) since 2016, as well as the 10MW Katsina wind farm since 2007. Anonymous interviews conducted by other researchers note that, in rentier states such as Nigeria’s, where oil dependency is high, “whenever the government is approached with proposals for renewable energy contracts, they were often told that ‘their technology isn’t viable on a large scale’.”

The ECN is a parastatal under the Ministry of Science and Technology. It was established by the Energy Commission of Nigeria Act №62 of 1979, as amended by Act №32 of 1988 and Act №19 of 1989 as “the apex government organ empowered to carry out overall energy sector planning and policy implementation, promote the diversification of the energy resources through the development and optimal utilization of all, including the introduction of new and alternative Energy resources like Solar, Wind, Biomass and Nuclear Energy.”

While it has been a major actor in developing several policies and producing research, it does not appear to have the powers, the sufficient levels of influence within the government and the budgetary backing to ensure that policies are implemented effectively. While the Commission has produced major national renewable energy policies, including the National Energy Policy (Revised 2022), the National Energy Masterplan (Revised 2022), and the Renewable Energy Roadmap for Nigeria 2023 (REMap), it does not possess ministerial powers like the Ministry of Power, the budgetary amplification like the REA, nor the domiciliation under the presidency or vice presidency like the Energy Transition Office (in 2022).

For example, the ECN’s budgetary allocation under the 2024 National Appropriation Act is about 20% of that of the REA. In addition, a Google Trends comparison shows that, while the Ministry of Power expectedly has, over the past five years, dominated Google search frequency in Nigeria relative to the ECN and REA, the REA significantly receives more frequent Google searches than the ECN.

Figure 1. Number of Google searches annually by MDA (Author’s illustration based on Google Trends data)

It is, perhaps, these limitations of the ECN that account for the decision of the presidency to establish a non-statutory body, heavily supported by Sustainable Energy for All (SEforAll) the Energy Transition Office (ETO), to drive the Energy Transition Plan (ETP) which was contracted for development to a major foreign consultant (McKinsey). However, because the ETO is a non-statutory body (and could not be institutionalised as the ECN is technically mandated with the role that it would have played as a statutory body), it was vulnerable to the whims of the Nigerian political and policy space. Therefore, by 2024 the ETO’s vitality tapered off, and it was announced that the president directed its absorption into the NCCC.

The REA, on the other hand, has since 2018 received substantial amounts of funding from the World Bank, African Development Bank (AfDB) and other development partners to implement multi-million dollar energy access projects across the country (the National Electrification Project). It was created under the Electric Power Sector Reform Act (2005) to: Promote rural eElectrification in the country; coordinate rural electrification programs in the country; and administer the Rural Electrification Fund (REF) to promote, support and provide rural electrification through public and private sector participation. The funding it has received since 2018 has enabled the Agency to have a budgetary allocation that is 100% higher than that of its parent ministry, the Ministry of Power (see Figure 2). The only other case of a parastatal under the FMP whose budget is larger than its parent ministry is that of the Transmission Company of Nigeria, with a budget that is 15.6% higher than that of the FMP Headquarters.

Figure 2. 2024 budget allocation by MDA (Author’s illustration based on National Assembly, 2024)

However, the REA faces some limitations. Given that it has no direct control or power over other parastatals under the Ministry of Power, it has faced some lag or challenges in eliminating regulatory bottlenecks to scaling mini-grid deployment. Two cases best demonstrate this. The first is the fact that distribution companies (DisCos) are not mandated by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) to make public their five-year expansion plans. This tends to slow down mini-grid deployment by requiring mini-grid developers to seek information directly from a DisCo on a project-by-project basis, on whether a potential site lies within the DisCo’s five-year expansion plan. In fact, in 2020 DisCo approval had the second longest approval time for mini-grid developers in Nigeria compared to ensuring village rights, EIA, tariff approval license. imporation license, and general approvals. The second case is that of the 2016 Minigrid Regulations not making provision for obtaining regulatory approval for a bundle or portfolio of project sites, which would reduce transaction costs for mini-grid developers. This is part of the reason for the long delay in the REA’s deployment of the Minimum Subsidy Tender (MST) financing window between 2018 and 2023.

Fortunately, due to advocacy of the Renewable Energy Association of NIgeria (REAN) and other actors, the support of development partners, continuous engagement with NERC and the piling up of different bottlenecks not addressed by the 2016 Minigrid Regulations, a revision was secured which addressed both of these issues in the 2023 Minigrid Regulations. This also indicates that some of the limitations of the REA with respect to energy sector parastatals that it has no statutory powers over are partially compensated for by the strong organized private sector (partly strengthened by the National Electrification Project) and the backing of development partners which support policy and regulatory advocacy work. In fact, the mini-grid sector is one of the very few in Nigeria where the country performs excellently in both the quality of the regulations and the licensing and approval processing times. According to the World Bank’s Regulatory Indicators for Sustainable Energy (RISE), Nigeria’s score on Mini Grid Framework shot up more rapidly than the sub-Saharan African average between 2016 and 2017. By 2021, Nigeria ranked first in Africa in terms of the quality of its mini-grid framework, and among the best in terms of framework for off-grid systems. For the five other countries (Kenya, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Tanzania and Zambia) that the Africa Minigrid Developers Association (AMDA) was able to collect data on, Nigeria outperformed all in the mini-grid licensing and approval processing times in 2020.

A more recent actor to emerge in the renewable energy space is the National Council on Climate Change (NCCC). The Council was established by the Climate Change Act 2021 (CCA 2021) and vested with powers to make policies and decisions on all matters concerning climate change in Nigeria. The CCA 2021 envisions an ambitious position for the NCCC as a national coordinator for the country’s climate change efforts. It includes provisions for a Climate Change Fund, as well as the obligation for MDAs to establish a climate change desk to be supervised by an officer not below the Directorate cadre, responsible for ensuring integration of climate change activities into their core· mandate and ensure adequate planning and budgeting for all climate change programmes, projects and activities.

However, the NCCC is not substantially funded, and received around the same level of budgetary allocation in 2024 as the NADDC did (see Figure 2), which is a big problem considering the fact that the NCCC’s mandate is substantially wider and more intensive in scope than that of the NADDC. In addition, the NCCC’s pedigree has been undermined by the president’s creation of the Presidential Committee on Climate Action and Green Economic Solutions (P-CAGE) and the appointment of a Special Presidential Envoy on Climate Action (SPEC). This creates a duplication of efforts and a conflict of the mandates of the NCCC and the P-CAGE.

Coherence among Allied MDAs

The difficulties do not end there. A sector allied to the mini-grid sector is the electric mobility sector, as electric vehicles (EVs) can improve mini-grid utilization rates and profitability. The MDA with the mandate to advance the EV industry is the National Automotive Design and Development Council (NADDC), which sits under the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment. However, the demands of a nationwide expansion of EVs and public charging stations are substantial, while the NADDC’s budget allocation in 2024 was only NGN748 million — much less than the ECN and REA, and 100% of which is recurrent expenditure (all of which is allocated to personnel cost). Consequently, a high-level official in a major energy sector public body expressed the opinion in an interview with Clean Technology Hub in 2022 that the NADDC does not have the capabilities to undertake such a massive investment, and suggested the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), which at the time was still a government parastatal, to be the driver of EV public infrastructure in Nigeria.

In addition to this challenge, the NADDC’s attention to e-mobility faces the problem of competing priorities. The Agency was created in 2014 with an initial focus on developing Nigeria’s traditional (internal combustion engine) automotive industry. Since the Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration began to focus on Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) to alleviate the impacts of the removal of petrol subsidies in 2023, the NADDC has also increased its focus on CNG vehicles relative to the earlier growth in attention paid to e-mobility. If social media posts are any indication, this is decipherable from the NADDC’s posts on X (formerly known as Twitter). By examining 301 posts on X between January 2021 to September 2024 (3.7 years), it is apparent that there has been a significant decrease in the proportion of posts related to electric vehicles after 2022 (see Figure 3). Posts in 2023 begin in November, a month into the resumption of the new Director General, which means that the sharp decline in the percentage of EV-related posts in 2023 occurred not under the previous DG whose 2021 and 2022 tenure was filled with a high percentage of such posts.

Figure 3. Percentage of NADDC’s X social media posts related to each technology, January 2021 — September 2024 (Author’s illustration)

In essence, the Nigerian e-mobility sector suffers from the NADDC’s prioritization of ICE and CNG vehicles over EVs. While the National Automotive Industrial Development Plan (NAIDP), launched in December 2023, contains significant policy provisions for e-mobility, many of the key provisions have yet to be executed.

An outcome of this comparatively low-intensity e-mobility promotion by the NADDC is the fragmented nature of e-mobility content in national policies driven by different MDAs. The targets set for e-mobility in the National Agenda 2050, launched in 2021 by the Ministry of Budget and National Planning differs from those set by the Energy Transition Plan developed by 2022 under the Energy Transition Office (ETO), while the National Development Plan (2021–2025) launched in the same year as the National Agenda 2050 makes no mention of the subject, as well as. It is quite revealing that the NADDC’s X social media posts did not make any allusions to the e-mobility targets in the National Agenda 2050 and the Energy Transition Plan in 2021 and 2022, respectively, but it does for the National Automotive Industrial Development Plan (NAIDP) 2023 developed by the NADDC itself. The National Energy Policy (2022 revised edition) developed by the ECN, does not mention e-mobility by name but mentions other technologies such as mini-hydropower plants and nuclear power plants. Revealingly, the ECN’s 2022 National Energy Masterplan (2022) makes no mention of electric vehicles, but mentions ICE and gas-powered vehicles. The NAIDP developed in 2023 by the NADDC contains targets that differ from the National Agenda 2050. In other words, e-mobility is either not mentioned in renewable energy policies developed by other MDAs, or when mentioned, have targets different from those of the NADDC.

Problems also arise with respect to rural electrification. It may be argued that the problem of low Average Revenue per User (ARPU) which mini-grids face in low income rural areas is the result of state failure in enabling sectors where productive use of energy are greatest — i.e. failure of MDAs in fostering agricultural transformation, functional rural primary health care centers, functional public schools, and good road networks that foster market linkages. In Nigeria, these are the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare (MHSW) and the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), Federal Ministry of Education, and Federal Ministry of Works.

This lack of a multisectoral approach is reflected at the policy level. A review of key national policy documents in education, agriculture, health, renewable energy and national development reveals that there is an asymmetry of perception of the importance of rural electrification. Whereas the health, agriculture and education ministries see electricity challenges as just one type of challenge within a broader sea of more important challenges within their domains, the power MDAs see it as central. As a result, the need for coordination between rural electrification and other rural development activities is better highlighted in renewable energy, rural electrification and national development policies than health, education and agriculture policies (See Table 2).

Table 2. A summary of relevant Nigerian sectoral and integrated policies and their electrification content

The same thing applies to the wider power sector in two ways. Firstly, Nigeria’s energy transition through utility-scale renewable energy and decentralized renewable energy requires the importation of components and equipment worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Even for smart meters, for example, which are needed by 6.3 million grid-connected customers and each user connected to a mini-grid, foreign exchange fluctuations can disrupt government metering programmes. As the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) revealed in its testimony to the Senate Committee on Power, one of the major setbacks to the CBN’s metering intervention from 2020 was “high reliance on foreign exchange in the procurement and production processes”, due to “over reliance on importation”. Therefore, the country needs to develop the manufacturing capabilities (technological, organizational and innovation capabilities) in the production of solar panels, inverters, etc., in order to minimise the balance of payments constraints to its energy transition.

Secondly, in contrast to India, the failure of industrialization and economic diversification policies undertaken since independence has meant that residential demand continues to predominate electricity consumption — at 59% in 2020, which as analysts Olu Verheijen have also observed, is well above the African and global averages (38% and 30%, respectively). This residential demand is not matched by substantial levels of ability-to-pay because, in a subcontinent that already has the lowest median income in the world, out of 47 African countries with available data on median income per day in 2018, Nigeria ranks 32nd, far below peers such as Ghana, Kenya, Senegal and South Africa. In fact, when considered globally, with a ranking of 133 out of 149 countries, Nigeria has one of the world’s lowest median income levels. As a result, the power sector has been unable to attract sufficient liquidity by serving high-consumption and credit-worthy commercial and industrial (C&I) customers, while slow median income growth constrains the ability for residential consumers to afford cost-reflective electricity tariffs.

Addressing these twin problems (i.e. the import requirements of an energy transition and the inadequate share of industrial demand in driving on-grid electricity consumption) requires the concerted efforts of MDAs mandated with industrial policy responsibilities. This includes the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Budget and National Planning, and parastatals such as the Bank of Industry (BoI), Development Bank of Nigeria (DBN), and Small and Medium Enterprise Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN).

In fact, at the most basic level of public procurement of electricity from the national grid for office use, many MDAs contribute to the liquidity crisis suffered by the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry by owing billions of naira in unpaid electricity bills to DisCos — not to speak of the NGN1.3 trillion legacy debts owed by the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading (NBET) to generation companies. In December 2015, MDA debts to DisCos stood at NGN59 billion. By February 2024, Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC) alone announced that 84 MDAs owed it over NGN47 billion in debt — a 444% increase in debt owed by DisCos to AEDC between December 2015 and February 2024. In fact, given that the 2024 national budget is 443% higher than the 2015 budget, the MDA electricity payment debt percentage growth rate suggests that this is a persistent problem that does not decline as aggregate MDA budgetary allocations increase.

Likewise, the Federal Government, across all MDAs, depends substantially on dirty fuel as backup power for public offices and for vehicles — typically appearing as “fuel and lubricants” (including plant/generator fuel, motor vehicle fuel, equipment fuel and other transportation fuel) in the national budget. Taking two MDAs from among the top five with the biggest allocations in the 2024 national budget, it is interesting to note that the MDA with the largest allocation, the Ministry of Defence (whose budget is 79.4% recurrent expenditure), allocated NGN434.7 million to solar equipment and 205% more than that (NGN9.3 billion) to fuel costs. However, the Ministry of Works (which allocated 95.78% for capital expenditure) allocated NGN95.6 million for fuel costs and 197% more (NGN18.9 billion) to solar equipment, reflecting the mainstreaming of solar street lights.

In other words, the viability of Nigeria’s energy transition requires the actions of not only energy sector public institutions and the recurrent expenditure of all MDAs, but also the action of industrial policy institutions for building (largely) urban manufacturing capabilities and rural agricultural and social sector multisectoral development. The chief challenge, even if that of fostering coordination is overcome, is that not all MDAs have the budgetary and organisational capabilities that the REA possesses. In other words, uneven bureaucratic capacity would place limits on the effectiveness of ministerial coordination. The scholarly literature on cross-sectoral inter-ministerial coordination indeed generally highlights the difficulties in forging such coordination.

However, the predominant focus on coordination among energy industry practitioners continues to be limited to intra-energy-sector coordination, and only a few cases of (non-intensive) multisectoral coordination have emerged, including between the REA and NPHCDA, SMEDAN and the National FADAMA Coordination Office (NFCO).

The intra-sectoral and inter-sectoral fragmentation in the Nigerian renewable energy policy space is compounded by the broader dispersion and fluidity of power within the county’s electoral democracy. This is reflected in the frequent change in the leadership of MDAs with the electoral cycle. In 2024 alone, under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration, the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the REA was replaced in March and the pioneer Director General of the NCCC Secretariat was removed in June, less than two years after his appointment. The Minister of Power, DG and CEO of the ECN, and the DG of the NADDC were also replaced in 2023. While this is typical in electoral democracies, for Nigeria it means that the informal connections forged between the leaders of these key intra-sectoral and inter-sectoral MDAs get broken, and new leaders have to forge new bonds. An additional consequence is policy reversal. An example of this is the NADDC which, while under former Director General Jelani Aliyu was very explicitly pro-electric mobility, but with the new government’s focus on CNG tilted increasingly towards promoting CNG vehicles.

Conclusion and Recommendations

The Nigerian renewable energy policy space is fragmented. Seen through the lens of interests, power and capabilities, it is apparent that no single institution or coalition of institutions possesses both interest, power and capabilities in rapidly transforming one renewable energy subsector. The Ministry of Power does not have the power and capabilities to drive certain aspects of the energy transition — particularly for grid-connected utility-scale renewable energy since the national grid faces massive challenges in the transmission and distribution segments. While large hydropower generation has improved, the 10MW Katsina wind farm and the 14 solar IPPs have lagged behind. The ECN has the interest, but neither the power nor capabilities to drive major projects or foster the depth and breadth of interministerial and inter-agency coordination required. The REA has the interest and capabilities, but also not the power to drive multi-sectoral coordination. While some attempts are being made to address this, these collaborations are not deep enough. The NADDC has inconsistent interest in driving e-mobility, and does not have the power and capabilities to do so substantively. The NCCC has the interest and normative power backed by law, but not the de facto power and capabilities.

In addition to the uneven distribution of power, capabilities and interest, MDAs suffer from leadership changes, some policy reversals and limited substantive multi-sectoral inter-ministerial coordination. If Nigeria is to become serious in its energy transition goals as outlined in the Energy Transition Plan of 2020 and its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), it would have to rationalize its entire energy sector and inter-sectoral bureaucratic structure and the distribution of power and capabilities, while incentivizing MDAs to grow their interest in renewable energy.

There are at least three major mechanisms for intrasectoral and multisectoral coordination envisioned or created at the levels of rural electrification, national energy transition, and broader national climate action. For rural electrification, the Rural Electrification Strategy and Implementation Plan (RESIP) envisions two levels of project coordination within the government. Firstly, the RESIP sees a role to be played by the Federal Government, through the Federal Executive Council, in establishing “strategies to harmonize and optimize the rural development activities of various institutions to bring the maximum overall benefit to rural people”. Secondly, the RESIP tasks the REA in providing a forum for rural electrification stakeholders to meet at least once a year. In addition, the RESIP makes it mandatory: “for all MDA’s both Federal, States and Local Government and private parties involved with RE projects implementation to participate in the RE forum [irrespective] of their source of funding…The forum shall serve to disseminate information regarding federal government policies, guidelines and standards for RE project implementation in Nigeria and shall have the powers of oversight and coordination of all RE project implementation across the country.”

For the wider energy transition, in 2022 the Federal Government created the Inter-ministerial Energy Transition Implementation Working Group chaired by the Vice President to oversee the implementation of the Energy Transition Plan. For the even wider net zero transition, as previously mentioned, the Climate Change Act 2021 obligates MDAs to establish a climate change desk to be supervised by an officer not below the Directorate cadre, responsible for ensuring integration of climate change activities into their core· mandate and ensure adequate planning and budgeting for all climate change programmes, projects and activities. Reports by MDAs on emissions progress are to be made to the NCCC.

However, these de jure coordination provisions are either not on ground yet (as with RESIP rural electrification forum or all MDAs reporting emissions progress to NCCC) or, where they are (as with the Inter-ministerial Energy Transition Implementation Working Group), no in-depth research on the extent to which these mechanisms actually foster coordination rather than being merely a fora for unidirectional (from ETP or REA to other MDAs) or superficially bidirectional dissemination of information, has been conducted. Instead, research into energy policy in Nigeria tends to focus on either the policies themselves or the individual institutions. A simple Google Scholar search with MDA names as keywords reveals most academic papers to focus on policies, sector data analysis and modeling rather than assessments of institutional dynamics and appraisals of bureaucratic capabilities; while academic and practitioner research on inter-ministerial working groups is insufficient, and governments do not typically register, file or monitor them.

In light of these deficiencies, a number of recommendations may be made in order to improve the levels of coherence and coordination among federal bureaucratic units within Nigeria’s renewable energy policy space:

1. Accelerated Interest Formation: The FMP needs to build more interest in renewable energy. The Presidency should launch a specific initiative targeted at driving the FMP’s accelerated completion of utility-scale renewable energy projects beyond large hydropower plants. By enabling it to add a non-negligible amount of non-hydropower renewable energy power to the energy mix on the national grid, the FMP may develop greater interest in multiplying efforts in this area. There may also be complementaries with the more renewables-interested REA to enable mini-grid developers to become Renewable Energy Service Companies (RESCOs) capable of planning and deploying large scale renewable energy projects. If successful, then RESCOs may graduate from developing the capabilities for larger scale projects under the REA to becoming involved in large scale grid-connected renewable energy projects under the FMP.
2. E-mobility: The NADDC needs to take an explicit integrated automotive sector planning approach in the same way that the REA takes a least-cost electrification approach that includes grid extension, mini-grid deployment and solar home systems deployment to rural electrification. The NADDC needs to utilize objective criteria (total cost of ownership and geographically-differentiated manufacturing feasibility) to identify the exact mix of ICE, CNG and e-vehicles per vehicle type (e.g. e-mobility for two- and three-wheeled vehicles and CNG for passenger four-wheelers and heavy duty vehicles) in order to minimize their competition for policy attention.
3. Implementing Existing Provisions: The Presidency should put efforts into ensuring that the provisions in the Climate Change Act 2021 and RESIP 2016 for cross-agency relations and coordination are executed. Industry associations (such as the Renewable Energy Association of Nigeria) and donors (such as SEforAll) should also undertake advocacy and provide technical assistance for the development of these coordination capabilities and practices.
4. Research: More in-depth research needs to occur in three areas.

• Firstly, scholars and practitioners need to better understand how MDAs with a pre-existing focus on an emissions-heavy sector (e.g., promoting domestic ICE vehicle manufacturing for industrial development) evolve from having internally competing agendas that come with the introduction of imperatives for a sustainability focus (e.g., transitioning to electric vehicle use and manufacturing) into a more balanced focus. This is relevant for MDAs such as the FMP (where the pre-existing energy mix is dominated by gas-fired plants) and the NADDC (where the pre-existing focus was on ICE vehicle manufacturing capabilities).
• Secondly, in the African context where state capacity is generally low but national ruling coalitions may occasionally create pockets of bureaucratic effectiveness, there is a pressing need to better understand how an existing MDA such as the ECN can be transformed into a pocket of effectiveness. This is in contrast to the preference for creating an expert non-statutory agency such as the ETO from scratch with overlapping mandates as the statutory institution (ECN) and therefore leaving an organization like the ETO vulnerable to dissipation and the vagaries of political cycles.
• Thirdly, in-depth research is required to better understand the drivers, processes, outcomes and variation in effectiveness in energy sector bureaucratic coordination mechanisms.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the position of Clean Tech Hub as an institution.