Magnus Eze, Enugu
In a bid to address the nation’s energy gap, Deputy Vice Chancellor of Coal City University, Enugu, Dr. Emeka Igwe, has disclosed that the institution would soon commence research into clean coal.
The university, which has former Minister of Power, Prof. Chinedu Nebo, as the Pro-Chancellor, according to Igwe, is focusing on the area to make the abundant coal deposit in Enugu that gave it the sobriquet of “Coal City”, environmentally acceptable.
The Deputy Vice Chancellor in an interview with Daily Sun in Enugu, yesterday, said: “Coal City University is an outcome of a group of great thinkers and as the name goes, we are seriously going into specialty like doing clean coal research. That is what is being developed now, apart from the normal programmes is run in the university. We want to delve into that. We are so much involved so that the programme could come on stream.”
Igwe further said the research is not funded from any grant but solely financed by the barely two years old institution to make a statement in this direction and invariably help humanity, especially in tackling the nation’s energy need. Minister of Science and Technology, Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu, recently reiterated the Ministry’s commitment to diversifying energy sources to ensure steady growth of the economy.
Onu at a meeting with officials of the Nigerian Association for Energy Economists (NAEE) indicated that the Ministry was driving a lot of research on the development of renewable energy like solar energy, wind energy, bio-energy and small hydropower.
According to him, “we want to see how coal can be more acceptable to the environment because of its low sulphur content; we are interested in carrying further researches so that ultimately we start using it.
