The Federal Government is set to begin the installation of a 50MW solar power farm project in Kaduna State, Mrs. Bahijjatu Abubakar, the desk officer, Renewable Energy in the Ministry of Environment has said.

She told newsmen in Abuja on Monday that the 50MW solar power farm would be situated between the Nigerian Defence Academy and the international airport in Kaduna.

Abubakar said that Kaduna government was the first to respond to the call by the Federal Ministry of Environment to states to imbibe the use of solar energy.

She said that Kaduna State and the Synergent Powershare Group of investors from the United States of America had signed a Memorandum of Understanding for the implementation of the project.

She added that the solar power investors preferred the northern part of the country for solar power because of intense sun radiation in the area and wind energy in Enugu State, adding that they preferred to invest in energy generated by waves in Lagos, Port Harcourt and Calabar.

The desk officer said that the groundbreaking ceremony for the Kaduna project had been slated for February 19.

According to her, the investors would execute the project without Federal Government’s financial assistance.

The Federal Government would provide incentives such as import duty rebate and power purchase agreement and reasonable feed in tariffs, she said.

“All the government needs to do is to give them the enabling environment and appropriate incentives such as the tax and import duty rebate, power purchase agreement and feedin-tariffs.

“The feed-in-tariffs are very important as they will give the investors the incentives to know how long it will take for them to recover their investment.”

Abubakar said: “This Synergent Group are investors. They do not want one kobo from the Nigerian government. All they want is to ensure that we give them the enabling environment to be able to invest and that is what we have done. That is the reason why we are getting a lot of investors coming into Nigeria in this sector.

“What had happened in the past is that a lot of people want government to put money into this venture and we are saying under this renewable energy programme that government has no business putting money into power generation in renewable energy.”

She added that the ministries of environment and that of power were collaborating to ensure the success of the project, adding that the Nigeria Investment Promotion Commission had also set up a renewable energy desk to attend to investors on daily basis.

Abubakar said that the investors did not only make profits from their investment alone in developing countries, but that they also generated revenue, through carbon credit.

She advised states, local governments and big corporations to be mindful of the need to establish the viability of their projects before executing them.

She called on the states’ ministries of environment to set up renewable energy desks to benefit from the Carbon Credit project.

Carbon Credit is a leader in capturing the benefits of carbon finance to help deploy projects that reduce greenhouse gas emission and commercialise new clean technologies worldwide.