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Enugu State Government has unveiled plan to transition from an energy-poor state to a commercially viable electricity market generating over 690 megawatts of electricity and at least 20-hour per day power supply by 2030.

The government also says the urgency of the state in enacting the Enugu State Electricity Law to take immediate advantage of the 2023 constitution amendment and the Electricity Act 2023 to set up a viable Enugu electricity market and reliable energy supply is in tandem with its economic growth plan to make Enugu a leading industrial hub.

These were made known by the Governor of Enugu, Dr Peter Mbah, during a Roundtable themed “The Electricity Act 2023” Implications and Opportunities for State Electricity Market” organised by the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) and United Kingdom Nigeria Infrastructure Advisory Facility (UKNIAF) for the state governments and critical stakeholders in Abuja on Wednesday.

The Governor, who was represented by the Secretary to the State Government, Prof. Chidiebere Onyia, said the state was deliberate in its effort to create an enabling environment for energy players and investors to come in and help grow the state’s GDP from the present $4.4 billion to $30 billion.

“As a government, we have set out an ambitious economic growth plan and integral to that plan is the electricity needs of Enugu State and the investors that will be coming into Enugu.”

“So, keeping that in mind, what we have gone ahead to do is to set out the processes right after the constitutional amendment. We are creating our own Enugu State electricity market. Our key objective for doing this is to ensure the reliability of power that will serve as a catalyst for that growth by making the private sector actors feel comfortable to come to Enugu.”

“Enugu plans to be one of the first three investors’ focus and locations in Nigeria, and to do that we have to make sure that we have constant or reliable power as well as encourage a market where investors feel that the power arrangement is governed by a process that is both constitutional and backed by the right policy. That is the reason we decided as a government for Enugu State to be one of the leading states in setting up an electricity market.”

He said a significant portion of the electricity sector would be renewable and traditional power sources.

Also, speaking on the Enugu State experience in a panel discussion on “Closing the Energy Access Gap through Sub-national Electricity Markets: Doing Things Differently”, the Senior Special Assistant to Governor Mbah on Policy and Project Management, Louisa Chinedu-Okeke, said the state currently had no operating grid-connected generation assets and only one electricity distribution company with just 9 per cent electricity allocation from the national grid for over five million people.

She, however, said the Mbah administration had laid out a viable plan to transit the state to a commercially viable electricity market that generates well over 690 megawatts of electricity and at least 20-hour power supply by 2030.