Adewale Sanyaolu
Countries must creatively complement the use of fossil fuels and renewable energy in the interim pending when renewable energy can stand alone as major source of energy globally, Lekan Akinyanmi, Chief Executive Officer, Lekoil has said.
Akinyanmi stated this on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting at Davos. Globally, there has been an increase in calls for reduction of fossil fuel consumption which environmentalists have indicted for greenhouse gas emission.
“It is possible to keep an oil and gas company sustainable. The first thing to do is to stop denying that there is an issue. Indeed, there is an issue, Akinyanmi said. The change over from fossil fuel to alternative energy or cleaner fuels is a multi-decade or probably multi-century thing. The fossil fuel industry will still be relevant probably for the rest of our life time. What we need to do is to figure out ways to be responsible in the fossil fuel production and consumption process.
Historically, a lot of fossil fuel companies have produced oil and flared the gas. But it is actually the gas that is more efficient. It’s friendlier to the environment, so we need to shift our attention there. From our perspective as Lekoil, one of the things that helps us is that, a good chunk of our portfolio is actually gas so we are actually well on our way.
Energy analysts suggest that the renewable energy market will grow at a cumulative average growth rate of 7.6 per cent between 2020 and 2025 to reach 3,812 gigawatts by 2025. Rising investment and improvement in technology has seen a drastic improvement in renewable energy output.
Between 2020 and 2025, the United States and other developed countries are scaling up investments in renewable energy. However, The Asia Pacific region is emerging as the fastest-growing market for renewable energy globally, accounting for nearly 27 per cent of the global market share. Within the Asia Pacific, China and India together form the leading renewable energy markets having almost 75 per cent of the installed capacity of renewable energy.