Clean energy transition in a developing society: Perspectives on the socioeconomic determinants of Solar Home Systems adoption among urban households in southeastern Nigeria

Abstract

This study identifies factors that constrain the adoption of clean energy sources by urban households in southeastern Nigeria, using the Solar Home Systems (SHS) as a case study. It is premised on the assumption that adoption of innovation is affected by socioeconomic conditions and depended on both documentary data and surveys. Apart from discovering an abysmal level of adoption of the SHS among Nigeria’s urban population, it also discovered widespread fuel stacking amongst the households sampled; over 75% of respondents placed the SHS as the last choice and none chose the SHS as the first-choice source of household energy. Adoption of SHS is not heavily influenced by socioeconomic status but by such issues as the reliability of the systems, perceived problems in access to grid connections, and limited scope of energy generated. But overriding these challenges is the problem of awareness of the nature, uses, capacity and longevity of the SHS. Therefore, there is need for delimited studies of these issues and policy realignment if the transition to clean energy is to be achieved in Nigeria.

Keywords:

• solar home system
• clean energy
• Nigeria
• urban households
• climate change
• developing society

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 It is estimated that as at 2013, 50.9% of Nigeria’s population lived in urban areas (www.data.un.org/CountryProfile.aspx?crName=NIGERIA).

2 Limited in the sense that there is always a limited number of units of the PV cells the average household can afford and there is also limited space for the installation of extensive systems within the typical urban household abode in Nigeria.

3 In fact, Nigeria has the fastest growing middle class in Africa. It is stated that the middle class in Nigeria grew by 600% between 2000 and 2014 or 4.1 million middle-class households and 11% of total population of Nigeria belong to this class (Standard Bank 2015).