Sustainability & Climate Policy

Nigeria has committed to achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2060. Since that commitment, the country has developed a substantial climate-policy architecture, including the Climate Change Act 2021, the Energy Transition Plan (ETP), the Long-Term Low-Emission Development Strategy (LT-LEDS), and a new Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC 3.0) submitted to the UNFCCC in September 2025.

But a policy commitment is not the same thing as decarbonisation. A country can pass climate legislation, publish transition strategies and announce investment programmes without yet demonstrating sustained reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions.

This raises a more important question for Nigeria:

How far has Nigeria moved from making a net-zero commitment to achieving measurable sectoral decarbonisation?

This article examines that question using a simple five-stage framework:

Commitment: What has Nigeria promised?
Policy and institutional framework: What laws, strategies and institutions have been established?
Implementation: What is actually being deployed?
Measurable outcome: Is there evidence of declining emissions or increasing low-carbon deployment?
Gap: What remains between the stated pathway and observed progress?

1. Nigeria's Net-Zero Policy Architecture Is No Longer the Main Problem

Nigeria's climate-policy architecture has become considerably more developed. The Climate Change Act 2021 created a statutory framework for climate governance, including the National Council on Climate Change and carbon-budgeting mechanisms. The Act sets a net-zero timeframe of 2050–2070, while Nigeria's political commitment has centred on 2060.

The Energy Transition Plan then translated the 2060 ambition into a sectoral pathway covering power, transport, oil and gas, cooking and industry. The ETP estimates that achieving its pathway will require very large additional investments above business-as-usual spending. The official implementation material places the additional requirement at roughly US$410 billion between 2021 and 2060, illustrating the scale of the financing challenge.

Nigeria's LT-LEDS provides a longer-term economy-wide perspective, while the country's NDC 3.0, submitted in September 2025, commits to a 29% reduction in emissions by 2030 and 32% by 2035 under its updated framework, alongside the longer-term 2060 net-zero pathway.

The policy architecture, therefore, is not empty. The more difficult question is whether implementation is moving at the speed required by these commitments.

2. Sector-by-Sector Reality Check

2.1 Power and Energy: The Grid Remains Predominantly Thermal

The ETP envisages a major transformation of Nigeria's electricity system. The long-term pathway requires a substantial expansion of renewable energy, the gradual replacement of diesel and petrol generators, stronger transmission and distribution infrastructure, and much greater use of storage.

There is evidence of implementation. Nigeria has expanded mini-grid and distributed renewable-energy programmes, and the World Bank-supported DARES programme is designed to expand electricity access through distributed renewable energy. The challenge, however, is that the national grid itself remains heavily dependent on thermal generation.

NERC's 2025 quarterly data illustrates the point. In the first quarter of 2025, thermal generation accounted for about 70.1% of grid electricity generated, compared with 29.9% from hydropower. By the third quarter, the shares were 67.6% thermal and 32.4% hydro. These figures show some variation, but they also demonstrate that the grid remains dominated by thermal generation.

The ETP's own modelling is much more ambitious: it anticipates a major rise in solar generation and a progressive replacement of gas and decentralised diesel generation by cleaner electricity and storage technologies.

Assessment: Nigeria has moved beyond planning into renewable-energy deployment, but the scale of grid decarbonisation remains far below the transformation implied by the 2060 pathway.

2.2 Oil and Gas: Flaring Remains a Major Test

Nigeria's net-zero pathway cannot be separated from its oil and gas economy. The ETP expects upstream oil-and-gas emissions to fall substantially through reduced flaring, lower fugitive emissions, improved efficiency and declining long-term demand.

There are important policy instruments. The Petroleum Industry Act established a stronger regulatory framework for petroleum operations, while the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission has introduced regulations addressing gas flaring, venting, and methane emissions. The Nigerian Gas Flare Commercialisation Programme is also intended to turn associated gas that would otherwise be flared into an economic resource.

Yet the emissions evidence remains uncomfortable. The World Bank's Global Gas Flaring Tracker reported that Nigeria was among the world's nine largest flaring countries in 2024. More importantly, Nigeria's flare volume increased by approximately 12% in 2024, while flaring intensity also increased, according to the World Bank's satellite-based estimates. In 2025, Nigeria's flaring volume and oil production each increased by about 8%.

This distinction matters. A reduction in emissions intensity is useful, but net-zero assessment ultimately requires attention to absolute emissions as well as intensity.

Assessment: The regulatory architecture is strong, and gas-commercialisation activity is real, but current flaring trends do not yet demonstrate the sustained absolute emissions reduction required for a credible zero-routine-flaring pathway.

2.3 Transport: Real Implementation, but CNG Is Not Zero-Carbon

Transport is one of the areas where implementation is highly visible. Nigeria has expanded compressed natural gas (CNG) infrastructure and vehicle-conversion programmes following the removal of petrol subsidies. By September 2026, the Presidency reported that more than 120,000 vehicles had been converted to CNG, alongside more than 400 certified conversion centres and more than 90 CNG refuelling stations.

These developments should not be dismissed. Fuel switching can reduce exposure to petrol and diesel prices and may reduce some forms of air pollution. But from a decarbonisation perspective, an important distinction is necessary:

CNG is a lower-carbon fossil-fuel transition measure; it is not equivalent to zero-emission transport.

Nigeria's longer-term pathway depends increasingly on electric mobility. In March 2026, the Presidential Initiative on Compressed Natural Gas was expanded to include electric vehicles and charging infrastructure. This is an important institutional development, but the key performance question is how quickly Nigeria can move from CNG deployment to a transport system in which zero-emission vehicles constitute a substantial share of the fleet.

Assessment: Transport is moving beyond policy into visible implementation, but the present transition is still dominated by an intermediate fossil-fuel pathway rather than full transport decarbonisation.

2.4 Clean Cooking: One of the Hardest Gaps to Close

Clean cooking is particularly important because it sits at the intersection of energy access, public health, poverty, gender and climate change. The ETP envisages a rapid shift away from traditional biomass, with LPG playing a transitional role before greater penetration of electric cooking and other cleaner technologies.

Recent World Bank data show that access to clean cooking fuels and technologies remains low in Nigeria. The World Bank's current indicator series covers data through 2023, and the Bank's recent Nigeria energy-access work puts national clean-cooking access at roughly 26%.

The ETP, however, envisages universal access as part of the country's broader SDG 7 and net-zero pathway. The gap between current access and universal clean cooking therefore remains substantial, particularly for poorer and rural households.

Assessment: Clean cooking has an established policy direction and growing investment, but current access levels indicate that implementation is still far from the scale required by the transition pathway.

2.5 AFOLU: The Sector That Cannot Be Treated as an Afterthought

A major weakness in simplified discussions of Nigeria's energy transition is the tendency to focus almost entirely on energy. Net zero is an economy-wide concept, and Nigeria's land sector is central to that equation.

Nigeria's LT-LEDS makes this explicit. It reports that the country lost about 47.5% of its forest cover between 1990 and 2010, and estimates that a reforestation rate of at least about 2.3% per year would be required to reverse the long-term loss trajectory. The strategy's modelling treats AFOLU as a potential carbon sink in some net-zero scenarios.

This is crucial. A country cannot rely heavily on future carbon removals while allowing the underlying carbon sinks to deteriorate.

Deforestation, agricultural expansion, biomass use and land-use change therefore represent more than environmental-management problems. They are part of the arithmetic of Nigeria's net-zero pathway.

Assessment: Nigeria has important forest and land restoration initiatives, but the scale and consistency of land-sector protection and restoration remain a critical issue for the credibility of the 2060 pathway.

2.6 Industry: Decarbonisation Must Catch Up with Industrial Growth

Industry presents a different challenge. Nigeria needs industrialisation and economic growth, but a growing industrial base can increase energy demand and emissions unless production becomes progressively more efficient and less carbon intensive.

The ETP therefore envisages substantial emissions reductions through energy efficiency, cleaner industrial heat, changes in cement and ammonia production, and eventual movement toward zero-emission fuels for industrial heating.

The difficulty is that individual efficiency improvements do not automatically translate into declining absolute industrial emissions. If industrial output and energy demand grow faster than the efficiency gains, total emissions may continue to rise.

Assessment: Industrial decarbonisation requires more than efficiency projects. It requires measurable sector-wide emissions trajectories, cleaner electricity, low-carbon process technologies and access to long-term finance.

3. Nigeria's Sectoral Decarbonisation Scorecard

Sector	Policy direction	Evidence of implementation	Current evidence	Assessment
Power	Large-scale renewable expansion and replacement of fossil generation	Mini-grids and distributed renewables expanding	2025 grid generation remained mainly thermal	Early-stage progress
Oil & Gas	Reduce flaring and fugitive emissions	Regulation and gas-commercialisation programmes	Flaring remains high and increased in 2024–2025	Mixed / off-track on flaring
Transport	CNG transition followed by increasing electrification	Large-scale CNG conversion and emerging EV programmes	CNG deployment is much more advanced than EV deployment	Early but tangible progress
Clean cooking	Universal clean cooking	LPG, improved stoves and distributed-energy initiatives	Access remains around one-quarter of the population	Limited progress
AFOLU	Protect and restore carbon sinks	Restoration and sustainable-land-management programmes	Historical forest loss remains severe	Critical gap
Industry	Efficiency and deep industrial decarbonisation	Selected efficiency and fuel-switching measures	Sector-wide absolute reductions are not yet clearly demonstrated	Early-stage progress

4. Where Is the Real Implementation Gap?

The evidence suggests that Nigeria's principal weakness is no longer the absence of climate strategies. The larger challenge is converting strategies into sustained, measurable and financeable sectoral outcomes.

Finance

The scale of investment required is enormous. Nigeria's ETP identifies hundreds of billions of dollars of additional spending above business as usual through 2060. The country's 2024 Biennial Transparency Report also provides an important window into the finance, technology and capacity-building support needed and received for climate action. The question is not simply how much finance has been announced, but how much has reached completed projects and produced measurable mitigation outcomes.

Data and MRV

Decarbonisation cannot be demonstrated without credible measurement, reporting and verification. Nigeria has strengthened its transparency architecture through its BTR and national inventory submissions, but more timely and sector-disaggregated data are still needed for continuous assessment of progress.

Energy access versus decarbonisation

Nigeria faces a genuine development dilemma. The country must expand reliable and affordable energy access while simultaneously reducing emissions. This helps explain why natural gas occupies an important transitional role in the ETP. But a transition fuel should remain part of a transition: it should not become a substitute for the deeper renewable and electrification transformation required by the long-term pathway.

Implementation accountability

The next stage of climate governance should therefore focus more strongly on measurable sectoral outcomes: renewable generation, absolute power-sector emissions, methane and flaring reductions, clean-cooking access, electric mobility, industrial emissions and land-sector carbon stocks.

5. Has Nigeria Entered the Decarbonisation Phase?

The answer is partly—but not yet at the scale or consistency required to say that Nigeria is on a demonstrated economy-wide decarbonisation trajectory.

Nigeria has unquestionably moved beyond rhetoric. The country has enacted climate legislation, established the NCCC, developed the ETP and LT-LEDS, submitted NDC 3.0, expanded renewable-energy and mini-grid programmes, built a substantial CNG transition programme and strengthened its climate-transparency reporting.

However, measurable sectoral outcomes remain uneven. The electricity system is still predominantly thermal; gas flaring remains a major source of emissions; clean-cooking access is far from universal; and the land sector remains central to the credibility of the country's carbon-removal assumptions.

It is therefore more accurate to describe Nigeria as being in an early and uneven implementation phase rather than as having already entered a mature decarbonisation phase.

The key test for the next decade is simple: can Nigeria demonstrate, through transparent sector-level data, that implementation is producing sustained reductions in absolute greenhouse-gas emissions while improving energy access and supporting development?

6. What Needs to Change?

Operationalise sectoral carbon budgets. Carbon budgets should become practical management instruments with clear sectoral responsibilities and reporting requirements.
Strengthen national MRV systems. Nigeria needs more timely measurement of emissions from power, oil and gas, industry, transport, waste and land use.
Measure absolute emissions as well as intensity. Efficiency gains should not be presented as decarbonisation when total emissions continue to rise.
Accelerate renewable electricity and storage. Distributed renewable energy is important, but grid-scale generation, transmission and storage must also expand.
Use CNG as a bridge, not the destination. CNG can support affordability and energy security, but long-term transport decarbonisation requires much greater electric mobility and mass-transit investment.
Make clean cooking a measurable national priority. Access, affordability and reliability should be tracked annually, with particular attention to rural and low-income households.
Protect Nigeria's carbon sinks. Forest protection, restoration and sustainable land management should be treated as core components of the net-zero strategy rather than peripheral environmental programmes.
Link climate finance to measurable outcomes. Climate spending should be tracked from commitment through disbursement, project completion and verified emissions impact.

7. Conclusion

Nigeria has built a substantial net-zero policy architecture. The Climate Change Act, Energy Transition Plan, LT-LEDS, NDC 3.0 and transparency framework demonstrate that climate policy has moved well beyond the stage of a single political announcement.

The harder question is whether these commitments are producing measurable decarbonisation. The evidence currently points to uneven and early-stage progress. Some areas—particularly distributed renewable energy, CNG infrastructure and climate governance—show tangible implementation. Others, including power-sector decarbonisation, clean cooking, gas flaring and forest protection, reveal substantial gaps between the desired pathway and current outcomes.

Nigeria's 2060 net-zero ambition should therefore be judged less by the sophistication of its policy documents and more by the trajectory of its emissions and sectoral indicators over the coming years.

The real transition begins when Nigeria can show, with transparent and repeatable data, that its policies are changing the emissions trajectory—not merely expanding the policy framework.

Evidence Gaps and Data Limitations

This assessment should not be interpreted as a substitute for a full national emissions inventory analysis. Important limitations remain, including differences in reporting years across datasets, delays between emissions measurement and publication, limited continuous monitoring of some methane sources, and challenges in separating grid electricity from off-grid generator emissions. These limitations make it particularly important to use consistent definitions and primary datasets when evaluating Nigeria's progress over time.

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