The United States’ climate envoy, John Kerry, has announced the formation of a carbon offset plan to assist developing countries in hastening their transition away from fossil fuels.
Mr. Kerry established the Energy Transition Accelerator (ETA) to fund renewable energy projects and speed up clean energy transitions in underdeveloped countries.
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The US will establish the program with the Bezos Earth Fund and the Rockefeller Foundation, with involvement from the public and commercial sectors, to run through 2030 and maybe 2035.
Mr. Kerry stated that Chile and Nigeria were among the developing countries that shown early interest in the ETA, as well as that Bank of America, Microsoft, PepsiCo, and Standard Chartered Bank expressed interest in “informing the ETA’s development.”
The U.S. climate envoy acknowledged widespread criticism of voluntary carbon offset schemes raised by environmental groups and a task force created by U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres, which on Tuesday recommended that carbon credits be used sparingly by companies and governments to avoiding undermining their net-zero emission plans.
Mr. Kerry said Mr. Guterres was supportive of the U.S.-led carbon market initiative provided there were safeguards to it.
Speaking on the progress that has been made so far on the energy transition plan of Nigeria, a Director General of the Nigeria Climate Change Council, Dr Salisu Dahiru said the energy transition plan of Nigeria is a tailor made, highly customised energy transition plan to Nigeria that has the twin benefits of helping Nigeria close the energy drought that most Nigerians are going through and also helping us serve as a pathway to achieving ‘The Net Zero Target of 2060’ as announced by President Muhammadu Buhari at the end of COP26 in Glasgow last year as well as being also in line with the Nigeria’s nationally determined contributions to
climate change mitigations known as the NDC.
According to Mr Dahiru, since its announcement, Nigeria went into full-blown implementation arrangements commencing with the launch of the energy transition plan.
He noted that the plan has one key feature which is the use of natural gas as a transition coil for Nigeria to propel the economy of the country to help bridge the electricity gap and at the same time help us cut down our carbon emissions emanating from the energy sector.
