Nigeria

Nigeria’s Long-Term Low-Emissions Development Strategy (LT-LEDS) provides revised historical emissions for 2018, which was used as the base year in Nigeria’s 2021 updated NDC. The LT-LEDS does not specify what global warming potentials (GWPs) were used. We therefore assume GWPs from the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) were used in line with Nigeria’s NDC update (National Climate Change Council, 2023b). We converted 2018 emissions to GWPs from the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) using sector-by-sector gas shares from PRIMAP for the same year (Gütschow & Pflüger, 2023).

The LT-LEDS does not provide the share of land use emissions out of its reported agriculture, forestry and other land use (AFOLU) emissions in 2018; however, this breakdown is provided for 2020 emissions under the LT-LEDS’s business-as-usual scenario. To exclude LULUCF emissions from our 2018 estimate, we assume no change in the share of land use emissions between 2018 and 2020 and apply this share to 2018 AFOLU emissions (National Climate Change Council, 2023b).

Overall, this results in a significant upwards revision of 2018 emissions levels from previous assessments which used 2018 data from Nigeria’s NDC Update. The LT-LEDS notes that the change in 2018 emissions estimates was largely due to changes in transport and AFOLU estimates.

To extend the historical time series, we used PRIMAP sector growth rates, both back to 1990 and forwards to 2022.

NDC targets

Nigeria’s NDC update uses global warming potentials (GWP) values from the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report (AR5). CAT uses GWP values from the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) to ensure comparability across countries.

The NDC provides a sector-by-sector breakdown of emissions in 2018 and 2030 under its BAU scenario. We have converted from AR5 to AR4 using the gas-by-gas breakdown for each sector from PRIMAP for the year 2018. We have not converted HFCs as we do not have information on individual gases; however, these gases represent only 1 MtCO₂e in 2018. We then apply the growth rates of each sector from the reported AR5 BAU to our new 2018 value to estimate 2030 BAU emissions in AR4. As the LT-LEDS provides revised historical emissions for 2018, which was used as the base year in Nigeria’s 2021 updated NDC, we apply this data with the NDC BAU scenario harmonised to the updated LT-LEDS historical data.

The final NDC update provides LULUCF emissions for 2018 and AFOLU emissions for the 2030 BAU. To estimate LULUCF emissions in the 2030 BAU, we applied the same ratio of LULUCF/AFOLU as in 2018.

The update provides no information on the extent to which Nigeria intends to rely on reducing land sector emissions to meet its NDC targets. However, the update does estimate the potential of nature-based solutions as about 115 MtCO₂e. Of these solutions, the top three are identified as agroforestry, improved forest management, and forest restoration, making up about 89 MtCO₂e of the total potential. We use the 89 MtCO₂e estimate as the upper bound of our estimate for the contribution of the land sector in meeting Nigeria’s conditional target and a proportional share of the 89 MtCO₂e estimate for the unconditional target. We assume this estimate is all CO₂ and thus there is no need to convert from AR5 values.

For the lower bound, we assume the land sector contributes an equal share as remaining sectors for both targets.

The Third National Communication identified significant abatement potential in the land sector, though its estimation of land sector emissions may have been higher than what is now reported in the final NDC update. Overall, there is significant uncertainty in the land sector emissions and our estimates are best guesses based on the available data.

Gas coverage

Analysis of the NDC covers CO₂, CH₄, N₂O and F-gases, which are included in Nigeria’s NDC target. Our assessment of historic emissions and current policies also includes PFCs and SF₆, which were around 1 MtCO₂e in 2018.

We derive our current policy projections from a combination of the Stated Policies Scenario from IEA’s Africa Energy Outlook 2019 and the Planned Energy Scenario from IRENA’s 2023 Renewable Energy Roadmap Nigeria for energy emissions, the US EPA for agriculture and waste emissions, and the US EPA and Energy Transition Plan for industry emissions. (Federal Republic of Nigeria, 2022; IEA, 2019a; IRENA, 2023b; US EPA, 2019). In general, the IEA Africa Energy Outlook 2019 report does not specify which of the policies have been included in the stated policies scenario. The IEA’s Africa Energy Outlook 2022 did not contain updated country level data, hence why we have continued to use the 2019 report (IEA, 2019b).

The IEA’s Stated Policies Scenario was used to derive our lower bound projections for energy CO₂ emissions. This scenario assumes development of coal-fired generation in Nigeria; however, all recent coal plant projects have either been cancelled or shelved. Therefore, we have adjusted our lower bound to assume the coal generation in the Stated Policies Scenario is met with renewable energy, in line with national targets. For the upper bound, IRENA’s Planned Energy Scenario was used for energy CO₂ emissions. In our lower and upper bound, projections for energy CH₄ and N₂O are extended using recent historical trends.

We have adjusted the energy emission projections from the IEA’s Africa Energy Outlook 2019 to take into consideration the impact of the pandemic. We distilled the emission intensity (GHG emissions/GDP) from the pre-pandemic IEA scenario starting in 2019. This emission intensity estimate was then applied to the most recent GDP projections from the IMF for Nigeria that take into account the effect of the pandemic (IMF, 2022). As these estimates only cover 2024 to 2029, we used the average GDP growth projected by the IMF for this period to extend the projections until 2035. Results were then harmonised to our 2022 estimate (see Historical emissions above). The IRENA Planned Energy Scenario already considers the impact of COVID-19.

Our planned policy minimum and maximum scenarios assume implementation of the Energy Transition Plan (ETP) which Nigeria released in August 2022 and for which it will need international support to implement, and the LT-LEDS Current Policies Scenario (CPS) (Federal Republic of Nigeria, 2022; National Climate Change Council, 2023b)

For the lower bound of these projections, we use the ETP’s growth rates for energy and industry emissions and the US EPA projection growth rates as proxies for the agriculture and waste sectors. For the upper bound, we use growth rates for energy and industry from the LT-LEDS Current Policies Scenario (CPS), which incorporates Nigeria’s NDC and the ETP (Federal Republic of Nigeria, 2022; National Climate Change Council, 2023b).

Nigeria has not provided detailed information about how it intends to reach its net zero target.

We have quantified the target for the purposes of our ‘Optimistic’ global temperature estimate. We assume Nigeria reaches net zero emissions by 2060, in line with the LT-LEDS and the announcement of former President Buhari at COP26. LULUCF is assumed to be a 70 MtCO₂e sink in 2060 based on the Renewable Energy Scenario (RES) in the LT-LEDS, which is the only scenario given that reaches net zero in 2060. Emissions in 2060 are therefore assumed to be 70 MtCO₂e when excluding LULUCF (National Climate Change Council, 2023b).

The CAT uses Global Warming Potential (GWP) values from the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) for all its figures and time series. Assessments completed prior to December 2018 (COP24) used GWP values from the Second Assessment Report (SAR).