 Let me begin by thanking the board and management of the Center for Global Development for this kind of invitation to share some thoughts on a just and equitable transition. I think the central thinking for most developing countries is that we are confronted on this issue of a just transition is that we are really confronted with two, not one existential crisis. The climate crisis, of course, is the central issue, but also extreme poverty. So for us it's not just the climate crisis, there's also the crisis of extreme poverty in the developing world. The clear implication of this is is that our plans and commitments to carbon neutrality must include clear plans on energy access if we are to confront poverty. This includes access to energy for consumption and productive use, spanning across electricity, heating, cooking, and other end-use sectors. But both the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the conflict in Ukraine have had severely damaging effects on decades worth of gains made in the energy sector in developing countries, particularly in the most vulnerable countries and those already lagging in energy access. Nearly 19 million people in Asia and Africa who have previously gained access to electricity can no longer afford to pay for their basic energy needs. The inflationary pressures caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and its after-effects and other macroeconomic trends have been further exacerbated by the ongoing war in Ukraine. Countries worldwide have been hit by record high prices on all forms of energy. Power prices are breaking records across the globe, especially in countries or markets where natural gas plays a key role in the energy mix. So as the supply of gas from existing sources becomes restricted, developing countries using gas are forced to compete with European countries who are scrambling to replace Russian energy with supply from other partners and, of course, this is driving up prices. This dynamic itself is compounded by the food and financial crisis also experienced by many countries as a result, again, of the war in Ukraine. What is subtext of the unfolding drama is the double standards evident in the response to the current energy crisis by many countries in the global north. Today, as I'm sure many of us know, excluding South Africa, the remaining 1 billion people in South Saran Africa are serviced by an install capacity of just 81 gigahertz of power. South Saran Africa has contributed again, you know, information that's already out there, that one has contributed less than 1 percent of cumulative CO2 emissions. CO2 emissions, by comparison, the United States has an installed capacity of 1,200 gigahertz of power to a population of 331 million people, while the United Kingdom, for example, has 76 gigahertz of installed capacity for its 67 million people. The per capita energy capacity in the UK is almost 15 times that in South Saran Africa, but many of these countries had barely a year ago seriously advocated or implemented policies on limiting public funding for fossil fuel projects in developing countries, making no distinction between upstream oil and coal exploration and gas power plants for grid balancing. But today in the wake of the energy crisis, many European nations have made recent announcements to increase or extend their use of coal-fired power for generating power through 2023 and potentially beyond. Of course, this is in violation of their climate commitments and analysis suggests that this will raise power sector emissions of the EU by 4 percent, a significant amount, and that's, you know, considerable given the high-based denominator of EU emissions. But also worthy of note is that Europe's energy crisis has not been ignored. It continues to be met with support and international resources. In stark contrast, the developing world is still being held to account on its emission reduction without adequate support and investment for their energy transitions. The point being made is that the climate crisis and our commitments to resolve it would involve significant sacrifices from all and not just for our countries. If the default position of the wealthier nations, once their energy comfort is threatened, is to resort to the debtier's fuels, then we may be on a recursive path, one step forward, two steps backwards. Demand management or energy efficiency measures is a sensible option to meet the current challenges that face our countries, not commissioning old coal-fired power plants. Another point to be made is that while Africa's current unmet energy needs are huge, future demand will be even greater due to expanding populations, urbanization, and movement into the middle class. It is clear that the continent must address its energy constraints and would require external support and a good measure of policy flexibility to deliver this. Unfortunately, in the wider responses to the climate crisis, we're not seeing careful consideration and acknowledgement of Africa's aspirations. For instance, despite the tremendous energy gaps, global policies are increasingly constraining Africa's energy technology choices. With the Kigali communique and several other formal and informal consultations, African nations are now happily more intentional in taking joint ownership of our transition pathways and designing climate-sensitive strategies that address our growth objectives. This is what Nigeria has done, especially with our energy transition plan. The plan itself, the Nigeria's energy transition plan, was designed to take to tackle the dual crisis of energy poverty and climate change and deliver SDG7 by 2030 and net zero by 2060, while centering the provision of energy for development, industrialization, and economic growth. We anchored the plan on key objectives, including lifting 100 million people out of poverty in this decade, driving economic growth, bringing modern energy services to the full population, and managing the expected long-term job losses in the oil sector due to global decarbonization. Given these objectives, the plan recognizes the role that natural gas must play in the short term, the short to medium term, to facilitate the establishment of baseload energy capacity and address the nation's clean cooking deficit in the form of LPG, which is why they are limiting public investments in gas projects as a critical energy transition pathway for Africa poses dire challenges for African nations, and we believe violates the enshrined principles of equity and justice, while making an insignificant dent in global emissions. Several countries, including the U.S., China, Japan, and large parts of Asia and the EU, still include gas as a major pillar of their multi-decadal decarbonization strategies, including actively using African gas from countries like Mozambique, Ghana, Senegal, and Nigeria. In such a global reality, limiting financing of gas projects for domestic use would pose a severe challenge to the pace of economic development, delivery of electricity access, and clean cooking solutions, and the scale of and integration of renewable energy into the energy mix. Also, our energy transition plan finds that an additional 10 billion U.S. dollars over business as usual is required annually till 2060 to shift the entire economy to a net-zero pathway. However, there is currently a dramatic mismatch in energy investments, while representing just 15 percent of the world's population. High-income countries received 40 percent of global energy investments in 2019. Conversely, developing countries with 40 percent of the world's population received just 15 percent of global energy investment, and that hasn't improved much in recent years. Energy consumption in developing countries has doubled in the last 15 years and is expected to grow another 30 percent in the next 15 years. Making capital available to fulfill the growing energy demand in these regions through renewables is central to reaching the goal of the Paris Agreement. All of our national-determined contributions under the Paris Agreement require an unprecedented scale of investments to flow into the African continent. An energy mix compatible with the 1.50 Celsius pathway would require 40 billion U.S. dollars to flow into sub-Saharan Africa annually, a four-fold increase compared to the 10 billion U.S. dollars invested since 2018. Further, the energy access element of the transition must be linked with the emissions reduction aspect of the energy transition. For too long, we've considered these two as parallel tracks. If energy access issues are left unaddressed, we will continue to see growing energy demand being addressed with high polluting and deforesting fuels such as diesel, kerosene, and firewood. As a result, efforts aimed at advancing climate goals must first and foremost create carbon space for growing economies that have historically made negligible contributions to global emissions and have an obligation to their people to provide access to energy for electricity, for cooking, and productive uses. The ultimate goal of the global energy transition should be to achieve reliable net-zero carbon energy systems to power prosperous, inclusive economies. In the Nigerian context, that means building sustainability into our economic planning. We have developed an economic sustainability plan in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, which included an ambitious plan over the near term to provide 5 million homes and SMEs with cleaner energy through our decentralized solar power program. This meant that 25 million Nigerians would have access to solar power. The first phase of this plan is already underway, and we think that this sort of program will very quickly ramp up progress towards net-zero emissions. But to ramp up action, we have presented evidence that shows that gas is critical to integrating a greater share of renewable energy Nigeria's energy makes. Limited grid systems generally have trouble integrating intermittent sources above 15% of generation. However, those intermittent renewables can increase to over 30% of generation when enabled by a similar share of natural gas. In order to drive the energy transition at scale, we need to take a comprehensive approach. We have to work jointly towards common goals, including the market and environmental opportunities presented by the financing of clean energy assets in growing energy markets. To this end, in addition to conventional capital flows from public and private sources, it's essential that Africa can participate more fully in the global carbon finance market. Currently, direct carbon pricing systems through carbon taxes have likely been concentrated in high and middle income countries. But carbon markets can play a very significant role in catalyzing sustainable energy deployment by directing private capital into climate action and improving global energy security, providing diversified incentive structures, especially in developing countries, and providing an impetus for clean energy markets when the price economics looks less compelling, as is the case today. So supporting Africa to develop into a global supplier of carbon credits, ranging from biodiversity to energy-based credits, will be a leap forward in aligning carbon pricing and related policy around a just transition. I also think that it's becoming quite evident that a just transition is key not only to ensuring equity in climate policy, but also in building market structures that incentivize climate action, such as well-functioning carbon markets. Giving the escalating debt, and I think this might also be a point to consider, especially when we look at the escalating debt situations of many developing countries, especially in the aftermath of the pandemic and the Russian-Ukrainian crisis, I think we should also bring debt for climate swaps into the climate finance mix. Now debt for climate swaps, as many might know, a type of debt swap where bilateral or multilateral debt is forgiven by creditors in exchange for a commitment by the debtor to use outstanding debt service payments for national climate action programs. So typically, the creditor country or institution agrees to forgive a part of the debt if the debtor country would pay the avoided debt service payment into a local currency, transparent local currency account, an Exco, or any of that kind of transparent fund, and the funds must then be used for agreed climate projects in the debtor country. So we can actually increase the fiscal space for climate-related investments and reduce the debt burden for participating developing countries. There are, of course, very significant policy actions that will be necessary to make this, to make DFCs or these sort of swaps more acceptable and sustainable. But I think that the important thing is that it's a win-win because obviously contributes to the MDCs of the creditor country and it creates the fiscal space necessary for climate investments for the debtor countries. So let me conclude by commending again the Global Institute for the excellent work that you do on such a wide variety of important development issues, but in particular for the opportunity to share some of these thoughts with you and also for encouraging different narratives, especially from the developing world here. So I must thank you again. Thank you very much all for listening. Thank you.