Udeme Clement-Ogbuanu
31 March 2008
Lagos — In line with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) initiative to work with investors in achieving ethanol production in Nigeria, the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Global Biofuels Limited, Dr. Felix Babatunde Obada, has disclosed that Nigeria would benefit from the $70billion Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) funds with the development of ethanol local capacity in the country.
He made this disclosure in an interview with THISDAY, at the official signing of Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), with Ekiti State government on ethanol project in the State over the weekend, saying that CDM which is also known as Carbon Credit, is a scheme put in place by United Nations to make developing countries producing environmentally friendly fuel benefit from the money that developed economies pay for polluting the environment.
Dr. Obada further revealed that Global Biofuels, the company handling ethanol project in Nigeria has entered into partnership agreement with Japanese and Canadian companies experienced in CDM matters as core investors in ethanol project to participate financially and in terms of technology in order to enable Nigeria benefit from CDM fund already traded in European countries.
He added that the project in Ekiti State alone would gulp over $83million to develop a factory for the production of over 200,000 litres of fuel ethanol on daily basis, while 5,000 hectares of land would be developed at a go for planting of sweet sorghum, which is the feeds stocks needed for the production.
"Right now there are over 44,000 companies registered in Europe looking for carbon credits, so we want to qualify all our projects in order to benefit from this scheme because we are not polluters.
We are also interested in companies that would participate right from project conceptualisation to commissioning and operation of the project, he said.
His words: ìCarbon Credit is being traded in the world today and the sad thing is that the developing economies like Nigeria and the whole of West African countries that are not polluters, which ought to benefit from the scheme are not benefiting right now.
Unfortunately there is no African Country yet that has earned a dime from CDM funds because it is traded within the European countries. The polluting countries supposed to come to non-polluting economies and buy Carbon Credit from them, but because we do not have the industries running we cannot gain anything from it.
So, once our industries begin to sell Carbon Credit, Nigeria would benefit and our banks would set up Carbon Credit desks to trade with the developed economies because the price is rising, it started with $5 and now is about $13 meaning that the price is increasing by the dayî.
He explained that it is not every biofuel ethanol project that would qualify for CDM. I don't want to mention any project that would not qualify for CDM, but though sweet sorghum as feeds stock is good and on it own as green filament would absorb carbon dioxide from the air, it would automatically qualify, but we must package the project in a way that could qualify so that we can issue Carbon Credit and sell it.
We have done thorough inspection on our site because we started discussion for this project in Ekiti State six months a go when we held the first meeting with the Governor and he set up a team to work with us, where we went right into the bush and we have surveyed the land and paid compensation to the land owners, so everything is in place for smooth takeoff of the project in the State, he maintained.
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